Packing Myself a Little


Dear Eugene,

If a person is to keep collecting paper napkins and tuck them under his armpit, what would you say he's up to?  I can tell you he's not trying to dry himself.  He's certainly not stealing either for the napkins are free for all.  What kind of a past would his action betray?

Today I dropped by a McDonald's for coffee.  When I was leaving the place a ketchup dispenser caught my eyes.  There's nothing wrong with it, nothing special about it; it pumped out free-for-all ketchup as it should.  It was a thought that caught my eyes catching the pump in action: would a person be so hungry to come in here and pump ketchup straight into her mouth?

Of course there is.  War time.  Famine.  Tyranny.  Climate displacement.  Happening now as I speak.

And do I know a person such as this?  No.  Never did.  Hard to imagine ever would.  The neediest person I know can drop into a McD and expect ketchup pumping and freeing.

"Does my unknowing do me a service or a harm?"  I can't quite answer Jesus on this one.  I'll need a different language for it.

“No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when I eat, I am locked up inside the taste of eating. For sixty years, ever since I came back from the camp, I have been eating against starvation.”

Yours, Alex

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