The Simple Life (Sans Paris Hilton)

Today it is raining. Sheets of fine mist slant through my gray Brooklyn sky and I watch it comfortably curled in my desk chair, writing poetry, drinking coffee, reading Buglakov’s The Master and Margarita, where Satan has just finished throwing a rager. I light candles and take a bath, paint my toenails, watch Jesus Christ Superstar, write more poetry, listen to rain dribble against my air conditioning unit with metallic thwacks.

When I wake up this morning, I find this comment from my mother on my facebook status: I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. All I could think was how the cold has reduced my world to a very small space, and all I do in that space is eat.

Of course, she has no way of knowing that it will be cold in Brooklyn again, that it will rain in Brooklyn, that I, too, won’t want to leave my space – or my space heater. But I consider it good advice, and I eat.

In the cold, on this day, I want nothing complex. I don’t want to cook. I want toast – and then to stick my hands in the toaster after I pull my bread out. I want salty sardines in olive oil and avocado. Sicilian black pepper cheese. Salt. Pepper. And then I want to go back to my desk, surrounded by candles and light, read about the devil, and listen to rain.