I am slow out of the gate

I believe that every day I should read some, write some, and draw some - perhaps painting. Every day should evidence some creative effort on my part. Some days words come flowing. I use my time well; my mind is not distracted. Tomorrow I work till 11 pm. It's an odd time to be in the hospital: most patients have eaten and been visited by their doctors; a new shift of nurses and staff are around. The mood seems subdued. At least it did last week: there was rain and the only trauma occurred right at 10 pm. Tomorrow night could be different.
I did want to comment on something I saw at the airport the other day. Jami and I were walking out and we passed a sign that read "oversized baggage inspection." The curious thing, as I remarked to Jami, was that the oversized baggage inspection was the same size as the regular baggage inspection. She seemed to agree with me that this was so. And we speculated on what undersize baggage inspection would look like. Image the tiny bags, perhaps so small as not to be noticed by the human eye. An undersize airport with undersize planes (each flown by kittens). Anyway, this is how comedy is mined; how comedic gold is discovered: just noticing the curious things about life and extrapolating through the imagination what a fuller description of life would be like. In our hugger mugger world the existence of oversize baggage vying with undersize baggage for airspace and inspection (notice that word "inspection" has as its root "spec" the latin word for mirror; an inspection is a mirroring into, an interpretation into, the, in this case, baggage of people's lives: what do their baggage contents tell us about their lives: how are their friendships formed, what are their loyalties, their hopes, their regrets? We can inspect in an oversized way, in general, and dismiss the contents of what people are carrying through the air port, or we can inspect in an undersized way, a way where we glance into and pry apart atomizing and erecting theses and syntheses, a dialectic of baggage and life. We can posit the question "when and in what manner are you your baggage?" and perhaps help them escape their baggage. Is that what people come to airports for? We are checked but decide to carry on.) might cause us some concern, especially when we think of the little planes with the tiny kitten pilots carrying the tiny bags. But I suspect that there might be no limit to undersize baggage - and hence why I didn't see the signs for it. The signs for undersize baggage might be so small that a human eye could not see them. Such signs would be more allusive: a plant out of place, a bit of fuzz, a misplaced book in the news stand - all are signs of undersize baggage.

Yassir, Dat's my Baby

Jami put a melon under her shirt and the fun began. Comedy can be this simple: a melon under a shirt - it's pregnant with possibilities. This may be the oldest joke in human history. Hieroglyphs indicate this being done to amuse the Pharaoh. Sometimes the Pharaoh did it to amuse his courtiers. Whole retinues put melons under their clothes to imitate pregnancy. And further back, there are Sumerian scripts that have recently been translated as "and then a melon was procured under the shirt in mimesis of pregnancy - we all laughed and had some more beer." The Romans combined Carthagenian fertility rites and Greek harvest festivals into their own slapstick creation of the Melonalia - where citizens walked around all day with melons under their togas and made mocking reference to getting too near the Priapas last night. Medieval Popes would carry melons under their regalia in demonstration of the text where Paul says that he is giving birth to the Church. Some early papyrii of the gospels contain palimpsests in descriptions of the Loaves and Fishes that say "and melons under the shirt." In Netherlandish paintings of the 1400s and 1500s women are carrying melons under their skirts in devotion to the melon martyrs, a group of holy virgins that were assailed by melons on a visit to the Holy Land at the behest of Louis Xth. A notable example of this devotion is seen in Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage. The presence of the little dog in the painting is not so much an iconographic indication of fidelity as it is to the fact that the bride has a melon under her dress and the groom has a melon for a head. And there is Durer's wood engraving Meloncholia I- a figure, head slumped on hands, while a cupid plays with stilts, is surrounded by mathematical and engineering shapes, at a loss for motivation in a surfeit of knowledge. Melons under a shirt were seen to be a cure for this state of affairs - hence the title.
On another note of comic genius: this morning Jami and I were discussing buttermilk, the fact that it doesn't have any butter, even though butter comes from milk. Because she grew up on a dairy, she has a wonderful store of milk production and bovine nurturing lore. It's hard to gainsay anything that she might assert. But still: no butter in butter milk - this seems way too conterintuitive. But she affirmed that this is the case - butter milk is milk allowed to go sour (which begs the question of expiration dates) and that it contains no butter. That curds are not butter - and neither I suppose is whey (what exactly is miss Muffet eating?). She told me that butter is churned and that different churning styles and methods yield different types of butter. To which I said, perhaps too hastily, that there would seem to be a great margarine of error in butter making. I say too hastily because the room got real quiet. I don't know what happened exactly, perhaps the house is settling still after 60 years, but the door to the bathroom was closed very softly in front of me. This is the treatment I receive from a woman who has a photo of the town of Bath on our bathroom door. I remember when I was young and reading about the great depression that stocks were sold on margin - and I remember thinking to myself, "that tub of Parkay in our refrigerator? You'd buy stocks with that? No wonder people were depressed - margarine tastes awful on melons."

Laughter

True enough, as Jami will tell you, one of the benefits we share together as husband and wife, is the interface of our brain waves. Scientific proof that a husband and wife's brain waves can cross, merge and hybridize is elusive. Yet, how can some things be accounted for. I am broaching this topic because suddenly I have developed the ability to write about cooking. I get this ability from some other worldly sphere - dare I say, from sharing alpha-wave patterns with Jami. So what I'm about to write is, in a sense, a product of Jami's as well as an invention of mine.
Lunch can be the day's most important meal. When I'm preparing my own lunch the first thing I do is go to Kroger. there I wait in line for the deli counter person to ask me what I want. I usually tell her that I want a fried chicken breast. Sometimes though I will ask for two short thighs. It's important that the chicken be fried. I take this fried chicken and go to the chip and cracker aisle. Jalapeno and cheddar flavored chips are quite tasty. Sometimes I go with sea salt and vinegar. Once I bought cracked black pepper, but this offering underwhelmed me. I take these items to the cashier. At the express line, while I wait behind someone paying for detergent, grape Hi-C, and pork chops with exact change in quarters and pennies, I grab a couple of Diet Cokes. One will probably be sufficient, but I buy two, just in case. What I have is a filling lunch for under seven dollars. I'll finish the chips at my studio while I paint. It's the nirvanic balance of my life.
People say to me, "OK Fred. It's apparent that Jami's superlative cooking skills are influencing your gastronomic sensibilities. What is she gleaning from her brain waves' connection to yours?" I have to admit that this is an astute question. Jami and I have discussed this topic at length while we play Scrabble. And I must say, and she may disagree with me as there might be some contention, but I must say that I believe that my comic sensibility has influenced her.
I say this because one thing I do comedically is laugh at myself. Jami has this same disposition. Remarkable.