Filler

I don’t like it when I look up a recipe for something I want to cook (Max and I are doing Weight Watchers right now) and the website host presents a long story about the beauty of fall foliage, or how eating butternut squash always reminds her of her friend Claudette, or some such thing. I really don’t care. I just want the recipe, and to know what I have to buy at Aldi or Safeway to make it. Some of these websites do give you a “Skip down to recipe” option so you can gloss over the all the filler that comes with the recipe. I guess if you follow that website maybe the filler is fun to read.

Lately a lot of stuff in life just feels like filler, and I want to skip over it and just get to the recipe. I care about people, and I have an interest in other people, but people seem generally caught up in very petty concerns. Sometimes I find myself feeling that their concerns are performative, as if they are not really worried about this or that thing with their children or their job, and I have to remind myself that people do worry about other things than death.

I had a strange moment last night. We were watching the season finale of The Wheel of Time, a kind of cheesy science fiction/fantasy show. There was an epic battle scene. A dog was killed and someone with “second sight” was able to visualize the dog’s soul being pulled up to heaven. For some reason this just had me spellbound. It was as if I were watching Sarah’s demise and I had an intense feeling of deja vu. Yes, that’s how it must have been, I felt in that moment. The next second I realized how ridiculous that was, that I was basically watching a Disney moment, not a visual guide to Sarah’s last moments on earth. It was so strange. I watched it again this morning, that moment, and it didn’t have that gut punch for me.