Porous Just Now

I had pizza for lunch. Not so long ago there were strict rules between me and me concerning any such starchy segues.  That dictum’s rather porous just now.  I was already imagining the taste of the crust when I saw the boring old Cesar Salad option staring up at me from the menu.  Five dollars extra for rubber chicken.  “I’ll take this chicken flatbread you have here.”

I’d been up jet lagged since 1:30AM.  Seven hours later I started slurping office coffee.  Good and hungry I tore into this enormous thin pizza they laid out and enjoyed a lunch conversation that mercifully moved from software to the migrations of Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. I ate all the good bits and left the crust butts.  By the time we were in Vietnam where the two Buddhisms meet up once again, I’d returned and finished off each of the pure starch crusts.

Digestion was merciless, as I knew it would be.  Back in the first afternoon meeting I tried to look attentively at the screen.  Whatever blood had been up there, keeping my mind attentive had now been diverted to the all hands of effort of breaking up the flatbread.  The mind hinted and then began to demand rest.  “You don’t mind if I stand?  I’m a bit jetlagged.”  By the third meeting I was up on my toes, pacing the room and counting the time till I could get horizontal.

I was in the Uber ride home about two and a half minutes with just enough time to get my laptop flipped open, when I expired.  “Sir?”  Ahh yes, we’re here.  Thank you . . .”  I checked my phone clumsily to confirm the drivers name: “Warren.  Thank you Warren.”  A beautiful sunny day, which everyone I’d met had needed to comment on.  I think they’d all been through a rough winter.  But I drew the shades and called the front desk for a 7:00PM wake-up call and reclined with the crisp pillows pressed up to my cheek.

Tuesday, 5/16/17