The Traveler’s Cure for Metabolic Syndrome

There's a term, "Metabolic Syndrome" which encompasses a constellation of symptoms that used to be known as “a slow metabolism”. 

Loads of people find themselves afflicted via perennial stupid dieting - eating less and less, which convinces their bodies they’re starving, so metabolism slows way down to conserve calories. It's a sticky wicket, because if you try to correct it with lots of eating,  your weight will balloon, and if you try to correct it with massive exercise, you will burn muscle. And if you just stay as you are, hello diabetes, reflux, sleep apnea, hypertension, and all the other familiar outcomes above/beyond dreaded love handles.

Ask a doctor how to escape Metabolic Syndrome and they'll hem and haw. But here's my trick: I go to Europe. I don't take taxis. I walk 5-7 miles per day. And I eat like a pig.

This has been a long-assed trip to Portugal. Three weeks in total (I have reasons).  And my body feels like it's sprung back to life. My lukewarm hunger reflex has become acute, like a fire that must be stoked. And I haven’t gained much weight, because calories are being burned without my body messing with the formula.

I just feel better. Active. Alive. Dynamic. The antithesis of couch potato. I can digest a peach in like 15 seconds flat. It’s like I’m throwing it into a kiln. 

And when I get home, I won’t make the mistake of shutting down my food inflow. Rather, I'll clean it up. Less pastries and cheese and fatty meats. Nothing fried. "Clean" proteins (lean, ala egg whites, white meat turkey, fish, tofu), "healthy" fats (extra virgin olive oil), and complex carbs (not much white flour and no sugar). I'll eatthree solid meals per day, including protein with each meal, to keep the fires burning, metabolism revving, and hunger reflex sharpened. Weight lifters know that to lose weight, you need to eat tons and never get hungry….but (this is critical!) all clean eating, and with no snacking.

I'll find ways to exercise as much as possible, but I don't need to maintain this ridiculous regimen. Having sprung my body from metabolic jail, it will stay normalized with 3-4 gym visits per week plus  reasonable walks. Just so long as I don’t re-starve myself via perennial dieting - i.e. eating small portions of poorly-balanced foods and skipping meals like crazy because, meh, I just don't feel hungry (your body is only trying to accommodate you, and you’re the one who trained it to stop asking for food!).

Blessed Are the Fuck-Givers

Friend-of-the-Slog Paul Trapani has been reporting, over past few months, various sightings of a food-world unicorn: really good restaurant French toast. 

Now it’s escalated to this:

What are these glorious home fries doing in a shitty diner in Plainview, NY?  Paul marveled at the crustiness, but I pointed out this unbrown relic that seemed nonetheless toothsome:

WHAT IS GOING ON???

My first though was “machine learning”, just because I’d just written the phrase  plus it never fails to sound smart and incisive. 

Then I remembered how me and several friends had agreed that in the (kinda) post-COVID opening, there’d been some hard-to-pin down foundational shift. Not a pleasant one. And foundational shifts are zero sum, so the breakfast elevation may simply be the other end of that. Nature finding balance. Gaia or whatever. 

But then Paul nailed it. It’s this: owners and managers cooking, due to the labor shortage. In other words, for the first time in a very long time, our French toast and home fries are being produced by actual fuck-givers. 

Blessed are the fuck-givers, for their home fries are crusty.

Photo by Paul Trapani

Grappling with Chowhounding Hubris

All Portugal trip reports in chronological order:

Oddly Bookended Food Day in Portugal (Nepali and Goan in Almada)
My Portuguese Rosebud (questing for a second helping of the arroz de mariscos that changed my life 30 years ago)
Bacalhau Score (glorious restaurant version of a homely grandma dish in Almada)
Grappling with Chowhounding Hubris (good-not-great pork cheeks in Sintra)
Taskinha Do Chef (Torres Vedras, Portugal) (exquisite family-run restaurant in Torres Vedras)
False Friends, Inadvertent Penetration, and Coimbra (diagnosing the Coimbra Problem)
Solar dos Amigos (rustic culinary splendor in Caldas da Rainha)
Burguezia do Leitão (the best roast suckling pig palace near Coimbra, in Casal Comba)
A Casa do Jorge (smashing wine country steakhouse in Santana, near Azeitão)


I've been rinsing/repeating a very familiar process around Portugal. I enter an unfamiliar town, eyeball a little, web search a little, scope out venues, entering cagily and applying strategies. And nearly each time, I score. Big (more photos to come). Which gives me the heebie-jeebies. Because there's a clear hubris to this scenario. Who is this guy to just wander into town and smugly announce he's found grandeur?

Chowhounding is inherently presumptuous. It just is. And since I do it more publicly than most, I've been hit with more than my share of counter-arguments and snarky take-downs. The big one is this: "You're eating only average quality, but you're insufficiently calibrated to local cuisine to properly rank it."

But deliciousness is deliciousness. The level of care and talent necessary to really stun me, after all the wide-ranging eating I've done, is a steep slope. I understand that, say, Colombian pan de bono is intrinsically yummy, so even an average rendition will make one cock an eyebrow. But I think I'm beyond being tricked by intrinsic yumminess into premature cries of "GENIUS!" I was, after all, a hard ass about Neapolitan pizza.

I discussed this today with a veteran Chowhound poster over a plate of pork cheeks at Cantinho de São Pedro in Sintra, Portugal. Here's some pork cheek porn for you:





I thought it was an interesting topic, but he seemed to feel I was bragging. Which, after all, is the entire point I’m trying to come to grips with. Is it bragging to declare you've just dropped into eight locales and sussed out eight incredible meals via brute chowhounding instincts? Well, what if that's what actually happened? And has been happening for years?

It should count for something that my singular goal is enjoyment, rather than credit-taking or legend-pumping. If I were a legend pumper, I'd have maintained my eager chowhound persona, hoisting my way into the spotlight as the manic/obsessive ambassador to the masses for the dining out realm (as, say, Richard Simmons and Ruth Westheimer did for their respective categories).

I disliked playing that character, and bailed the moment I spotted an exit ramp. I like chowhounding, but don't need attention for it. Yet, still, it's presumptuous to imagine one could consistently pop into places and cop grandeur with a finger snap. Thousands of chowhounds are out there treasure hunting, and I wonder if they’re as uncomfortable about it as I am. Is it a superpower, or a figment of our addled imaginations?

Mulling it over, I had an insight. What if I've been doing Machine Learning? Having fed so much data and detail into my mental database, have I reached some critical threshold? I've likely eaten in 30,000 restaurants, doing so with eyes wide open, fixated on cracking code and plumbing treasure. Plus, I was naturally good at it to begin with. So, 40 years in, have I simply acquired a sufficiently massive data stack to make it effortless? Is this simply the perq of a lifetime of obsession?

Ironically, we discussed this while eating merely good pork cheeks in a barely adequate restaurant. And I chose the place. So, hmm. Maybe forget the whole thing?


I was once invited to come hang out in Tokyo by an American expat food writer who claimed to be a fan of my work. Each night, he showed me his faves, which were wonderful. Each day, I’d find my own, which I eagerly reported to him, making him angrier and angrier. I’d just arrived. I knew nothing. I was eating in just any old place and proclaiming it brilliant, as if I could possibly find great stuff that had escaped his expert, experienced eye. Dial it back, guy. You are in no position to proclaim anything. I’ll show you what good is. This is my turf.

I begged him to try my places, but he didn’t need to. They were in his nabe, he knew “about” them, even if he hadn’t actually tried them, and if they were outstanding he’d KNOW about it. Because he LIVES there, and he’s an EXPERT.

This happens a lot. When I drop in and profess to find finds, it can leave local experts scorned. Even a little pitchforkish. “What are we, shmucks in your view?” Over the years, I’ve heard from dozens of people who grew up around Avenue J in Brooklyn who consider me an overheated loon for making such a damned fuss over Difara’s Pizza, which was, locals well knew, just some neighborhood pizzeria. Good, sure, but not the second coming of Christ, for chrissakes.

Working against conventional wisdom pisses people off. But it always surprises me. I always expect people to value fresh discoveries - especially ones right under their noses. I take it as well as I dish it out. Tell me that all my hometown faves suck, and I’ll listen eagerly, with pen poised, to your superior finds. Please please please do this! Please tell me I’m missing greatness…so I can experience greater greatness!! Step me up! Elevate me!

What does it feel like to be old?

I wrote the following on Quora in reply to “What does it feel like to be old?” and I thought I’d throw it on the pile here. 

Physically: recall a time when you were sick and you had to go out and do something, but weren't completely sure you could physically handle it. There's a teetery feeling, straight from your gut, as it dawns on you, in waves of horror and disgust, that you may not actually be able to do what you set out to do. As you quit, you're left feeling weak and frail. That's what the frailty of old age feels like. It's only horrific if you fight against it - i.e. fail to lower your own expectations and let go of the frustration. If you've prepared by practicing surrender (e.g. via meditation), there's much less anguish.

Psychologically: have you ever been in a household where small children were throwing a tantrum over some minor preference - like who they get to sit next to at the dinner table? Once the parents sort that out, they look up at you and ask where YOU'D like to sit, and you hasten to reply "Anywhere! I'll just sit anywhere! Doesn't matter!" That's what the psychological perspective of old age feels like. People around you seem like needy spoiled children chasing after ridiculously petty goals with no sense of proportion. You yourself need much less; you're more content just within yourself. That's why old people often decline to express preferences and insist that people not worry too much about them.

There are, of course, exceptions (as with any observations about humanity). But this is how I see it as I, myself, age, and as I've carefully watched how people's minds work.

Bacalhau Score

All Portugal trip reports in chronological order:

Oddly Bookended Food Day in Portugal (Nepali and Goan in Almada)
My Portuguese Rosebud (questing for a second helping of the arroz de mariscos that changed my life 30 years ago)
Bacalhau Score (glorious restaurant version of a homely grandma dish in Almada)
Grappling with Chowhounding Hubris (good-not-great pork cheeks in Sintra)
Taskinha Do Chef (Torres Vedras, Portugal) (exquisite family-run restaurant in Torres Vedras)
False Friends, Inadvertent Penetration, and Coimbra (diagnosing the Coimbra Problem)
Solar dos Amigos (rustic culinary splendor in Caldas da Rainha)
Burguezia do Leitão (the best roast suckling pig palace near Coimbra, in Casal Comba)
A Casa do Jorge (smashing wine country steakhouse in Santana, near Azeitão)


If you're new here, you'd be smart to question how I, a stranger blasting through quickly, could claim to have found some of the best possible bites in lots of different places. You might be satisfied by my explanation that I'm a professional with a preternaturally good nose, 40 years of experience, and a reputation for making killer finds. If that's not persuasive, I understand. I, too, wrestle with the presumptuousness and hubris of it all.


I arrived at Galeria Restaurante in Almada, Portugal at 2:59pm, a mortal sin in Southern Europe. It was out of the way and generic-looking, but I’d sniffed out a single obscure lonely tip online and deemed it legit. "Are you still serving?" I asked the peevish waitress, who glanced at her watch and looked up at me like the culmination of every terrible thing that had ever happened to her. But I was seated and handed an enormous menu, which I ignored.

I told her that I knew the restaurant is a little bit famous (completely redeeming my earlier transgression) for certain dishes, and I wanted one of those. She began listing some, starting with "bacalhau com broa", a homey old-fashioned dish, seldom seen in restaurants, of codfish topped with crunchy buttery garlicky toasted crumbs of heavy cornbread. Yes! Stop listing now! I want that!

The following work of art was produced in like seven minutes:



If you don't mind a brief cry, go ahead and blow up the photo.

Extra detail (you’re welcome):




Spud shot!




I returned for dinner (maybe the fourth doublehitter in my lifetime) with friends, and we ordered a bunch of stuff without asking for recommendations, and it was merely good. I think every element of the above story was necessary for my lunch success.

PRKR Follow-Up

This is a follow-up to this. 

So, PRKR never slid as low as I hoped. Ever a contrarian, I look for cheap entry points with the enthusiasm that everybody else applies to fancy exit points (the former sets the stage for the latter). Maybe it's the Jewishness in me, but I've kept hoping for a lower price, and never bought, and I may soon get squeezed out when PRKR's big trial date gets announced. The current price of $1.20 is probably low enough, but I'll stubbornly keep waiting, and hope to buy some at $1.10 and maybe more at $1. If this were easy and relaxing, everyone would win. 

As I explained last time, when trial date gets announced (god only knows when), it should shoot up as the faithful scurry to get back in. As trial grows closer, it should shoot up more, as the hotshots cut in last-minute in their Maseratis. And I fail to see any reason it won't reach something like the $1.86 it hit last time. Which would be awesome. 

This play I am advocating compels dumping everything before trial starts (whence little twitchy tells from the judge could start spooking investors). 

The shares I bought at 40¢ I will let ride through trial and perhaps beyond, but that's speculative, and I'm prepared to kiss them goodbye. But if I get another shot at $1.10, I will take it, and pay the high taxes on the (hopefully steep) short term gain, selling on the trial's first day. 

And let me tell you something about me: I’m often right about stuff (good analytical skills + ample intuition is a rare and useful combo), but when I fail, it can be spectacular. So be careful out there. 

My Portuguese Rosebud

All Portugal trip reports in chronological order:

Oddly Bookended Food Day in Portugal (Nepali and Goan in Almada)
My Portuguese Rosebud (questing for a second helping of the arroz de mariscos that changed my life 30 years ago)
Bacalhau Score (glorious restaurant version of a homely grandma dish in Almada)
Grappling with Chowhounding Hubris (good-not-great pork cheeks in Sintra)
Taskinha Do Chef (Torres Vedras, Portugal) (exquisite family-run restaurant in Torres Vedras)
False Friends, Inadvertent Penetration, and Coimbra (diagnosing the Coimbra Problem)
Solar dos Amigos (rustic culinary splendor in Caldas da Rainha)
Burguezia do Leitão (the best roast suckling pig palace near Coimbra, in Casal Comba)
A Casa do Jorge (smashing wine country steakhouse in Santana, near Azeitão)


In 1992, when I was last in Portugal, I was only beginning to eat fish. Like many chowhounds, I was a picky eater, something I never felt obligated to apologize for. After all, what is chowhounding but extreme pickiness? But I was starting to play less and write more, so I could no longer indulge culinary whims. I made myself like fish.

My biggest early boost was in a seafood restaurant right on the river across from Lisbon. You had to take a ferry to get there, and it was one of three restaurants right at the boat landing. My contact on that side of the river, a local music producer with the improbable name of Vítor Hugo, had booked me for a jazz master class and concert, and, having heard about my food obsession, led me directly into a seaside dining room so skinny you could touch both walls with the span of your arms. We sat on small wooden boxes as the gravely waiter, wielding an enormous pot and an enormous ladle, spooned out steaming soupy arroz de mariscos, sort of like paella soup with coriander and replete with clams, mussels, shrimp, lobster, and unidentified gloriously delicious sea monsters.

It was one of the greatest meals of my life, and I’m not kidding when I say that I’ve thought of it, if only briefly, every day for 29 years. I always figured I’d be back soon, but then Chowhound happened (supposed to be a two or three year enterprise, though it’s now going on 25), and then recovering from Chowhound having happened, and I didn’t make it back until now. So very far into the future.

I somehow lost three decades, and it’s very disorienting, especially at moments like this. I’d booked a room in Almada, near the ferry, and ambled around the port, which seemed unrecognizable. It was jammed to bursting with huge, loud mega cafes. I stood there moist-eyed amid the touristic mediocrity, like one of Colombus' crew trying to recognize his pristine Hispaniola amid the clatter of 2021 Santo Domingo.

One place claimed to be an arroz de mariscos specialist, so I headed there and it was half as good as my previous (people always say food memory lies, but my palate's proven to have perfect recall). Still real good, though.

I made mistakes eating this, because I was rusty. The waiter was solicitous but not quite condescending, because he sensed some facet of some fraction of my story. As I ate, I picked up steam, regaining my sea legs, so to speak. I sucked shrimp brains, and dissected exoskeletons like a surgeon. As he brought the check, the waiter called me "amigo", and this is not Mexico where the word is spoken glibly.

But it was not like my arroz de marisco. Not even close.

A few weeks ago, I explained a memory trick which involves letting memories surface at their own pace, slow and steady. 12 hours after this meal, I recalled that my gig and my meal were not in Almada, but in Seixal, a village 15 minutes up the coast with its own Lisbon ferry service. So I made my way there, and suddenly the restaurant's name flashed into my head: Pescador. The Fisherman! I found an obscure reference on the web, in Portuguese, along with an address, and I drove straight there, discovering that it was exactly where I'd remembered! And still super skinny! But now it has a new name and it’s dolled up.



As I stood frozen before the window, an old-timer limped by, so I grilled him in broken Portuguese. "Yeah, I think I remember...." he croaked out possibly his last words on this planet, "but that place closed a long, long time ago. Different owners now.” He shrugged and kept walking. A representative of the single most sentimental culture on Earth, and he couldn’t even button it for me. No “A shame!”  No “It was great!” Nothing. Just exit stage left.

I’d arrived too late. I’d thought I had all the time in the world. But you can't fast forward three decades without repercussions. 1992 feels like yesterday to me (I honestly don’t remember much from the Chowhound years, or my recuperation years thereafter). I’m still there. But the world moves on.

Oddly Bookended Food Day in Portugal

All Portugal trip reports in chronological order:

Oddly Bookended Food Day in Portugal (Nepali and Goan in Almada)
My Portuguese Rosebud (questing for a second helping of the arroz de mariscos that changed my life 30 years ago)
Bacalhau Score (glorious restaurant version of a homely grandma dish in Almada)
Grappling with Chowhounding Hubris (good-not-great pork cheeks in Sintra)
Taskinha Do Chef (Torres Vedras, Portugal) (exquisite family-run restaurant in Torres Vedras)
False Friends, Inadvertent Penetration, and Coimbra (diagnosing the Coimbra Problem)
Solar dos Amigos (rustic culinary splendor in Caldas da Rainha)
Burguezia do Leitão (the best roast suckling pig palace near Coimbra, in Casal Comba)
A Casa do Jorge (smashing wine country steakhouse in Santana, near Azeitão)


Odd food day in Portugal. I’ve been here a while (will try to post previous eats eventually) and needed a change of pace, so I started out with chicken momo with not-quite-hot-enough sauce, pretty good, at a Nepali restaurant in Almada called "Base Camp", which strikes me as an extremely clever name (though if I were Nepali, it might be like calling a soul food restaurant "Aunt Jemima's", Idunno).



Many hours later, I closed out with carill de frango do campo. "Carill" seems to translate to "doghouse", so I just ordered it on a whim, and found that it was curried chicken.



I know what you're saying: "curry in Portugal....ugh bad move". But nyuh-uh. Goa, a state of India, was a former colony of Portugal's, and while it's damned hard to find serious Goan food here, Indian touches have baked deeply into the food culture. So if British-style curry (harsh and scrapey) is a slap in the face to Indian chefs, this is more gracious. And I'm a sucker for "country" chicken in Iberia (see the bruisers at my all-time favorite restaurant, The House of Garlic Mayonnaise in Badalona, just north of Barcelona). 

This was just some stupid anonymous bar on a grimy street of a not-food town (Dom Afonso Henriques 10, Almada). And pretty great. Nine euros.

This is why we go to Portugal.

High Difficulty

To any visitors from the future who've accidentally found their way into the Slog (not sure how; since no one links here, Google barely indexes the Slog, leaving it essentially invisible), I have a humble request: Please take into account the high difficulty rating.

I write all this without a drop of feedback, and pretty much without readers (I envision a few morbidly curious ex-girlfriends and a small claque of chowhound diehards patiently awaiting errant reports of yum-yums).

These writings might be anywhere between "brilliant" and "demented". Not sure. No one helps with that determination, leaving me at the mercy of my merciless self-skepticism (a few entries which have withstood my withering self-critique are indexed at left; I reread them sometimes to restore my faith that maybe I'm not completely wasting my time).

In installment 4 of my tale of the sale of Chowhound to a big corporation, I note how at my low point of bedraggled impoverished desperation, I was approached by the Macarthur Foundation:

I'd received an email from none other than the Macarthur Foundation - the "genius grant" folks who toss $500,000, with no strings attached, at people doing clever and/or useful things. And they were writing to invite me to, uh, well.....to serve on the nominating committee! You know; to help them find deserving recipients out there! People who could stand to be rewarded with half a million bucks for their fine, outside-the-box work! Do I know anyone like that?

I dutifully sent in a few nominations, including one for the Arepa Lady . And I was happy to do so, though none of my suggestions won. But it felt like someone crawling, thirsty, through a desert being asked to point jolly folks passing in a late model SUV toward parched souls who might like some lemonade.

That's how it goes for me. Utterly confusing surreality. I like to insist that life's sweetest if you opt out of framing yourself as starring in a movie. But it's hard to avoid the impression that I'm starring in a spoof for the amusement of some unseen extreme comedy nerd.

Me, I never got a dinner. But I watch beloved people of letters breathlessly followed by crowds of cognoscenti, their every mild witticism evoking guffaws. I do not yearn for easy guffaws. Receivers of easy guffaws stop trying and start Bob Hoping. Smug gloaters. It's perilously easy to reframe yourself as The Guy Who Does The Thing, rather than as a Thing-Doer. That's when the doing stops being any good.

So I’d make a miserable beloved Bob Hope. I'm here to drive it till it drops, a thing-doer who's 100% crew and 0% "talent". I strongly agree with Albert Camus that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. I am, as I've previously written, an Ant:

I'm like an ant. I'll very contentedly reconstruct a smashed anthill, one grain at a time, even amid multiple re-smashings.

To human beings, I suppose this seems sad. Humans aspire to grander dreams than endless drudging anthill reconstruction. They're taught to rage at the smashing.

But to ants, human beings - who grow ever more crippled and demoralized with every inevitable round of smashings, and who only with great suffering manage to soldier on with reconstruction - are the sad ones.

As always, I've been granted my wish (I'm always granted my wishes). I'm not being pestered, distracted, or flattered away from doing my damndest. And doing my damndest is the goal; not becoming a celebrated figure renowned for doing his damndest.

But here's the thing. To come up with - and explain - credible fresh insights no one's previously come up with is hard (I credit my younger self, who unselfconsciously marinated on various questions through the decades). But to do so in a vacuum is excruciating, much more difficult without feedback, applause...heck, even negative feedback from haters or naysayers. Any calibrating reflection, however wavy. One needs some indication beyond muffled silence; some glimmer beyond the opaque dead ends. Not to improve morale or to elevate pride, but simply to have something to grind against.

I've lived a binary life. Always X and the-opposite-of-X. I'm a schlub and a star. A loser and a winner. Smart and dumb. Kind and assholic. I can simultaneously hold an idea and its opposite in my mind without discomfort, because I'm cursed with enduring sanity and only a depraved kook maintains a lofty self-image in a world consistently offering, ahem, contrasting assessment.

So I'm probably doing what I think I'm doing at the quality level I believe I'm doing it at. But I'm also plying overheated annoying nonsense for no discernible purpose. Both. Always both! And at this point, I'm really too old to be pushed fully one way or the other - though the aforementioned postings in the left margin have, for the first time, solidly beefed up the not-total-nincompoop argument, sparking an unfamiliar sensation that I suspect might be some low-simmering precursor of pride.

I wouldn’t want to hear cries of "Nice job!" People garner hundreds or thousands of social media likes and repostings for stating the obvious, for stroking confirmation bias, and for sharing shots of adorable kittens. I'll opt out, thanks. I do not seek cheap Skinner box rewards. And I recognize that my entire proposition here is the antithesis of confirmation bias. Year after year, I delight in explaining how our assumptions are wrong and our impulses are self-defeating....while goofily expecting readers to welcome this, and revel in it!

Hey, I'm just following the Golden Rule! I'm offering what I like! I love sussing out my wrongness and self-defeating habits. I adore surprise, even when the surprise makes me the joke's butt. Above all, I've been focused on trying to become smart rather than to feel smart. It's a highly eccentric choice, but one can't have it both ways. Becoming smart means feeling perpetually dumb, because that's how learning happens. Most people don't/can't learn because they'd need to presuppose that something's missing…which is unthinkable! I've set myself up to learn, which explains how a shmucky B+ student from the paneled rec room basement zones of 70s suburbia - a child of foosball and Asteroids, who remains utterly unimpressive - managed to cough up numerous credible fresh insights no one's previously come up with. I enjoy the grace of a highly-determined idiot (and keep offering the secret here, hoping someone will take it and run and do way better than I have).

Again, it's just my adherence to the Golden Rule. Like an adoring puppy eagerly offering its owner a stiff, bloody pigeon carcass, I proffer the gift I'd most desire: perspective on your enduring wrong-headed stupidity. And I’m absurdly confused by the utter non-response.

Despite my broad self-awareness (I’ve framed this about four different ways so far, above), the silence still oppresses. Yet I know this is the best possible outcome. Outcomes are always best-possible. The universe unfailingly contrives the necessary circumstance for evolution and learning, even if it's hard to see it. And, having learned this, I can appreciate the perfection while also ruing it. Just because it's so much harder this way.

Working in a vacuum - essentially pulling a Salinger, though hidden in plain sight - is extraordinarily difficult. If I could finally convince myself I was doing something legit great, I might enjoy some helpful tailwind. If crowds hung on every word, I might reframe the enterprise and transcend to better heights. As a devoted karma yogi, my commitment level is permanently pinned to "11", but the latent potential for transcendence is always there. I can scarcely enumerate the eurekas overlooked, or the awkward, wordy explanations that might have been streamlined by some elegant, ingenious turn of phrase springing into my head if I knew it really mattered to people. 

I worry that I'm not reaching my potential because, at some level (i.e. plainly evident reality, at least at the surface) I’m an enfeebled has-been self-indulgently droning on and on in an invisible blog. Such a launching pad is encumbered by especially sticky gravity. High difficulty!

I don't turn my mind often to that self-image. I opt out of drama, which is why I no longer get depressed. But there's a legitimate question: Is that yet another horrific flight of fancy my brain cooks up to bait and hook me? Or is it reality....while the lofty notion that I'm aptly channeling my talent (and fuck 'em all if they don't realize) is the flight of fancy? Am I quietly, honorably building something worthy, or am I a kook compulsively erecting an ugly ramshackle Watts Tower?


It's obvious that, even at this late date, I still sometimes struggle with the dilemma that sparked this Slog's founding insight as I struggled, so many years ago, to decide whether I was experiencing a grim lonely Christmas Eve, or a glorious peak moment of comfort watching a terrific movie on a great big TV from an extraordinarily comfy couch. I’ve grown very clear about that, but not 100% clear. Human beings don’t do 100% anything!

Sniffing the Tribal Tendencies of Local Retail

Being vaccinated, I mostly don't wear a mask. But I dislike kerfuffles, so I've developed a sixth sense for tribal morés.

Starting in the center, with CVS, and working leftward:

CVS: No mask*

Bakery: Mask in hand, just in case.

Starbucks: Mask on.

Trader Joe's: Mask, distancing.

Whole Foods: Mask, distance, hazmat suit, and CDC vaccination card glued to my forehead.

Now moving rightward from center:

Local Gin Mill: Mask off upon entering.

Auto Repair Shop: Mask off before entering

Home Depot: Hide mask carefully (no ear strap dangling from pocket).

Indie Hardware Store: Hide vaccination card. If I must search through wallet for a credit card, I do so below counter level to avoid shame and embarrassment.

*- though if I need to sneeze, I try to move away from people, and sneeze into the crook of my arm.