Many European and US-American years went by, without me fasting. Each morning I had some form of breakfast, light or intense, as celebration or as mere quotidian digestive flow.
However, moments during these few years, in which I felt physically and mentally filled, kept telling me that some cleansing was needed. Feeling filled does not seem as a state worth aspiring. Some free space is needed under the rim.
Finally, a couple of weeks a go, I skipped one breakfast. This week, once more, I decided not to break the fasting after the nightly digestive rest. However, for the second time I felt an unknown draft towards eating. Thoughts of food, moments of flavored memories arising out of “nowhere”, and I began to wonder… it felt as some form of automatism had taken over, and eating no longer was connected with physical necessity, even desire.
I felt a bit frightened. Not frightened because I would see it as an evil to be eating on automatic mode. “Evil” seems too dramatic a term, too religious, too humanistic, too close to “gutmensch” attitude. I felt frightened because the thoughts of Aristippos of Cyrene would be challenged, when he claims that the joy of man is there for the elevation of the soul.
A day of grocery shopping in Manhattan yesterday put the whole dilemma in perspective. I had begun to question the daily structure under which I eat each day, not only because the eating thoughts came often but much more because eating to me is much more than chewing thirty minutes to an hour. Eating means the thoughts of what one wishes to eat, the balance that goes into how food is to assist a healthy maintenance, they buying of the ingredients, their preparation, and the actual baking or cooking of meals. There is plenty of work going into each single meal. For me that is the case. And seeing how myriad of individuals around me in Manhattan spend years paying for prepared food in containers, without heating it, without serving it, without smelling it, just by swiping a card, or after speed-dialing, and after 45 minutes of eating, conversing, and texting at once, they make their way to their desk, possibly not realizing that above their head there were birds fighting on one of the Bryant Park trees.
That life around me for 30 minutes in the midst of Manhattan, gave clarity as to why the thoughts of eating sit in me comfortably, in a sustainable mode, and not in one of automatism.
Thanks to that, I brought the bought ingredients home with the joy of making my signature bread, once more.
Sila Blume 
Leave a comment