In Which I Eat Irresponsibly

Driving West

Where are the houses?
All I see are cars,
and few enough of those.
Portable lives, I suppose,
which I can access, briefly,
if I choose to stare
as we pass,
living life out in the interim
between destinations.

Too bad for those others
going east,
too blurred for me to discern
their busy lives.
And at this speed
I don’t have to worry
that their problems
will become mine,
that the parents are unhappy,
only taking the kids on vacation
as an unconscious apology
for their impending and ugly divorce.
The brief passing period is perfect
since I see their lives
but don’t have to.

Poem:
I got curious about the people I pass or who pass me on road trips. It's quite interesting to think about all the people on the road at any one time. Thousands of people in motion all over the country. So much of human life is spent in transit these days, and I just felt like writing a poem about what that feels like as I peer into their car windows every once in a while.

Observation:
Today I showed up to class to find out it was canceled. This is hardly the first time this has happened, but seeing as I spend an inordinate amount of time on my computer, I always get an email before I leave saying there's no reason to leave the apartment. No email today. So I sat on a bench outside the classroom and watched people walk up, read the sign on the door, look around in the same confusion I did, and walk away. Then a guy I've known since elementary school walked over to me and struck up conversation. Ben Ruppert is a Baptist, and one of the only religiously-inclined people I actually enjoy talking to about the subject. We have an unspoken agreement to remain reasonable and only talk about things we feel comfortable with. And since he's started taking some philosophy classes, we have a context in which we can do this. Ben defends what I see as the only viable defense for the existence of God. It's called
presuppositional apologetics, and if that name isn't enough to scare you off, you're doing better than most. Basically, it describes why rational, science-minded people like myself will never agree with rational, religious-minded people like Ben. It's a really fun thing to talk about, especially if you both agree to remain calm, reasonable, and avoid name-calling and cheap shots. So instead of class, I spent my hour from eleven to noon engaging in real philosophic discussion. It was a nice change of pace, since the class is progressing slowly and only occasionally deserving of its claim to philosophy.

Exercise:
"Hank and Helen: The Beachfront Condo"
This is a dialogue exercise. Hank and Helen are married. Hank is a pessimist. Helen is an optimist. They discuss whether or not to buy a beachfront condo.

"I don't know. It can't be much worse than it is here, I guess." Hank looked around their half-million dollar apartment with a critical eye. The shower had started dripping just yesterday, and if that wasn't a sign of impending disaster, it was at the very least an immense annoyance. The whole point of owning a nice apartment was so you wouldn't have to associate with people like plumbers. It might be a better bet to just buy a new place. Chances were good that the people looking to sell had just fixed all the little things in an effort to make the condo more appealing. "First it's the shower, then it's the refrigerator, and all of a sudden, the roof is caving in."
"Don't be silly," Helen replied. "There's nothing wrong with our place that a little love won't fix I have the plumber coming on Tuesday. Everything will be fine."
"You say that now, but once we let the plumber in, it's a sure bet he'll find something else that needs fixing. And then it's a never-ending process of repairs. In no time we'll have plumbers coming in to re-plumb the mistakes the first plumber made. No thank you."
Helen rolled her eyes. "Do you know how ridiculous you sound? It's just a little drip in the shower. If you're so worried about it, we can just have the shower replaced. No need to look at a whole new property. Besides, I have high hopes for the garden I started on the roof here. And I'm just sure that Mrs. Mathews will warm up to us eventually. She can only hold our slight disruption against us for so long, after all."
"That slight disruption you're talking about wouldn't happen to be when the movers broke her door with the armoire, would it?"
"Well..."

Me:
I ate too much today, and it kind of ruined my night. I went into the kitchen with the intent to make a couple of pieces of bread with pesto, cheese, and sun-dried tomatoes, but I opened the bag of bread to see a bit of mold on parts of it. So, like any irresponsible college student, I picked off the moldy bits and promptly stuck all of the remaining pieces in the toaster two by two and consumed them. Eight pieces of delicious bread later, and I was full, but I had already started dinner by that point, and wound up eating that too. So I retreated to my room to lie down for a while. This was a fine state of affairs, but I let myself have a day off of biking yesterday, so I felt obligated to get back to it today, which only resulted in my stomach feeling terrible. I made myself stay on the bike for quite a while, but I don't feel like I did very well, and I didn't feel very well doing it. Stupid bread. And just to clarify, I'm fully aware that if there's mold on the bread, it means the whole amount of bread is technically infected with the mold. It's not that I pick off the mold and think I've sanitized it. It's just that I don't like looking at mold as I eat it. That is to say, I'm not opposed to the principle of eating mold; I just don't like seeing it as I do so.