cinnamon stream of consciousness
Cinnamon is a spice. A spice I put on toast. I rarely use cinnamon in the form of a cinnamon stick except for the festive mug of hot cider. I rarely decorate my beverages. Well, I dash them with spice but I use nutmeg. Some rare occasions my beverage gets hit with a packet of pink or yellow, one of those cancer causing sweeteners. It’s fitting that I decorate my soy latte with a touch of cancer. I live life on the edge. I take risks with my clothing everyday. I’m convinced the washing machine is in cahoots with my clothing, conspiring to trick me into an ill-perceived sense of proportion. I am small, no I am big. These jeans have stretched, no this shirt has shrunk. My wardrobe and cleaning apparatus celebrate their victory at happy hour on Friday and clink glasses filled with fruity cocktails. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the anthropomorphosis of food; name-brand candy running amuck, an ear of corn smoking a corn cob pipe, a hot dog walks into a bar. If a banana sang the good song on Broadway for years and suddenly hit a bad streak forcing him to take a role as a supporting cast member in the bundle of bananas appearing at a grocery store near you, would it taste better? Grocery stores are like retirement homes for food. It’s where the fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, legumes, eggs, nuts, milk, yogurt and cheese go to pasture after leading successful lives as entertainers. In retirement, they lead quiet lives of desperation, knowing they are destined for mass consumption. En memoriam of the dearly departed food, we grieve alongside mass gravesites called landfills and swap stories of remember when; remember when that hot dog battled evil and won the girl and they rode off into the sunset happily ever after? He knew how to enjoy the spice of life. In mourning death, we embrace the delicate nature of life and go home to our loved ones with the promise to enjoy the small moments, the gestures and looks of love from our husbands and wives, the smile from a best friend, the way our child asks for their favorite cinnamon toast for breakfast. Cinnamon becomes more than spice. It ushers in a timely reminder to be present to our lives. We scream a collective, “bah,” to cancer and conspiracy theories and lift our glass to the great spice of life, cinnamon. And that’s what I think about cinnamon.