How to Live Deliciously

If Ronald Majthenyi’s CERN-based portal to an alternate worldline can make Catherine alive again, and all the Maj asks in recompense is a quick MP3 decrying Divinitee’s blockchain metaphor, briefly consider consequences before denying it three times before the cock crows, bidding a quick adieu to Ryerson’s own Klaas J. Kraay, and hopping into Majthenyi’s portal.

One: After a minor electromagnetic prickle, get olfactored into the cedar-smell of your aunt’s cabin. Intuitively understand you are still thirty-seven. If your sister sits adjacent at a sturdy oak table, looking bored but still beautiful, age having added only fecundity to the fundament of her beauty, she must be 39.

Two: If you’re holding Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, interpret its length and lack of literary import as betraying your own vague contentment. Intuit an emancipation from your lifelong pathology of chronic low mood.

Three: Remember rental properties and driving into the city twice a week to conduct business. Know that these hours at the cabin with its sauna and its soft earth and its dock and its deep waters redolent of gasoline are yours as they are hers. If Catherine cooks an elaborate soup with root vegetables picked from the small garden your aunt tilled for years, rub your Gulliver in a pantomime of anticipation.

Four: Gaze upon her brown arms again in the sauna. Wonder what happened to the grief-blogger who’d occupied this timeline prior to your arrival. Rationalize that there was none, as he wouldn’t even have needed to blog about grief.

Five: In the fixity of a big brass bed, place your forearm and bicep in Catherine’s stomach, fold your knees into hers, and find the old life inwardly collapsing from memory like the infrastructure of a decade’s long dream.

Six: Play scrabble on a large stone on the porch that serves as an ersatz coffee table.

Seven: If Catherine leaves CBC Radio One on in the background all day, realize you are no longer enraged by the political posturing of the woke mob. Realize your anger at their consensus worldview was borne solely of your anger with the world itself. Realize that without an all-encompassing grievance, you could care less what is virtue-signalled of on the CBC.

Seven: Find yourself sated after one measly glass of wine. Don’t even consider what stupefaction the porch’s propane tank might yield. Think, “I am happy. ”

Eight: If your beagle Runsitter runs into the woods, he could be subjunctively eaten by bears. As the man of this household, presumably just chock full of creaturely freedom, you must negate the conjugation of that verb, i.e. ‘Thanks to my intervention, the dog was not eaten by bears!’ Run into the woods, blow your bear whistle, and see the tree Runsitter barks at, screams at more like, a tree that is the most tree-like manifestation of Ronald Majthenyi imaginable.

Nine: Leash Runsitter. Give Runsitter a look, i.e. ‘Goddamn pal, this Majthenyian birch will be our little secret. And don’t think many treats aren’t forthcoming should you telepathically assent not to draw attention to this tree going forward. ’

Ten: Return to the cabin, a strange hotel aesthetically opposite the rococo techne palace Dave Bowman passes his time at. Lie beside her. Listen complacently to political posturers. Feel both as hungry and as full as you’ve been since adolescence. Slurp a second bowl of the simple soup. Find Einstein on the Beach on a digital radio station. Hold her ample hips. Touch noses. Lock eyes. Try to hold on. Try to hold on to all the magic found in dreams. ONE COMMENT ON “HOW TO LIVE DELICIOUSLY” Grievin’ Gary: Okay, I’ve been following your blog thus far because I thought you made some interesting points about grief plus admittedly I was intrigued by the more lurid aspects, but now if you’re in another dimension or whatever how am I even reading this? Got to call fake news on this one, I’m afraid. Four Pinocchios!