Nothing Special and A Little on Love

These days have provided me with absurd physical and psychological challenges. Today, I spent over nine hours working at Great Harvest and another four hours at Ivanna Cone. The labor of sponge and dough preparation, the early shift, moving furniture in the house, biking downtown, and so on have worn me pretty threadbare. I recall, somewhat unhappily, of my fall semester of junior year (2007) when I believed and acted as if I could fulfill all the demands put on me by force of will. Though I cannot say that I failed, I can say that I now appreciate the energy needed for such acts of devotion. At Great Harvest, stirring a thick brew of flour, honey, yeast, and water with a large wooden spoon, feeling the tension in muscles and resistance of my bones that are still unfamiliar to the work, I meditate on Sisyphus and Camus's interpretation thereof. I smile, and laugh at the work, at the feeling of drudgery and the satisfaction it can provide, I think of how every whirl of the spoon describes a boulder and hints at it rolling downhill. Food preparation and the labor of feeding others is never ending, rich in history, powerful in its embodiment, but always punctuated ambiguously; the punctuation of food is the comma, semicolon, ellipsis rather than the period.

In other news, I have been thinking on the varieties of love, the various realities and its manifestations. I think, sometimes fondly and sometimes frustratingly, of how I have loved youthfully, passionately, immaturely; but I have also come to recognize how love slumbers, mutates, fills niches, grows, and recedes in the situations that demand or precipitate such roles. I can speak only recently of the patience of love, its ability to wait and meditate independent of my own expectations or intentions; love can communicate, unspeaking, across distances; love may give perspective that I never expected to possess. Here, I speak broadly of love; the amicable, the familial, the romantic, the neighborly, and that between the newly acquainted all have their particulars, details about which I am constantly learning more. Mostly, I feel studious, meditative, and active in the deciphering the experiences relating to the waking and sleeping cycle of love, the relationship it has with distances, the role of communication, and so on. I may, sooner or later, recount some episodes that spur such reflection, but for now, good night.