Porridge for Breakfast

written: 17 September 2013

Maybe I am imagining this, but the porridge smells like you. Yes, somehow the ingredients and the spices interact in such way producing similar scent that your perfume generates reacting with the chemicals of your skin. Given I am missing you; maybe that’s just in my head, yet again, maybe there is more to that.

I finished the serving on my bowl and help myself for another. This is the fourth consecutive morning I have this porridge for breakfast, but still I savor every spoon of it. Besides, there is plenty of it in the giant pot in the kitchen. I better eat it all before it goes bad.

The porridge tastes great despite the sorrow your absence is inflicting upon me. I heard laughter from the back of my mind. I know this laughter well, though it’s been a while. It is mine, my old self that is: my detached, modern, independent self that has been imprisoned since you exhaust its pride.

How different could two phrases be in a sentence? It says mockingly. Yes, the porridge tastes great, and yes you are not here. The two mutually exclusive phrases do not need the word despite to connect them. The porridge would taste no better (and no worse) had you been here, that seems to be the obvious case for my pride lacking proud pal, my old self-conscious.

But I have experienced cases where even my most favorite food did not stir my appetite for my mind was too busy thinking about how to get you back in my life. That was not for just one or two days, but a whole couple of weeks! Thus, my current self-conscious appreciates the use of despite in the sentence. After all, it says in defend, I can feel that the porridge tastes great even though you’re not here with me. That’s the point, maybe I am moving on. Maybe this is just what I need, a delicious porridge that happens to smell like you.

Pathetic! Now every part of me agrees. This is exactly the problem of being attached to someone, when they leave, you just feel lost. You have been a part of me and now I don’t know what to be without you around. Pathetic!

I remember myself preaching about these Machiavellianism and post-modernism ideas. The center point of Machiavellianism is the idea of compartmented life. Every different aspect of one’s life is stored in a different compartment. Therefore, when one compartment is a mess, the others are not affected. The idea first developed in the field of architecture, it is applied to make sure that if there was a fire in a room of a building, all the other rooms, and ultimately the building, wouldn’t get burned down. This is the idea that makes sure that people still excel in their work no matter how their personal life is; makes

sure that a person still function well physically even though they are mentally broken down; makes sure that the porridge would still taste great whether or not you are present.

What an effective idea! However, just like a scholar finding the practical world to be a wee bit different, I found that that is not always the case. There are things you just can’t control. You came into my life and invaded all my compartments.

Maybe I was asleep then. Maybe I was asleep when you wrapped your limbs around me. Maybe I was asleep when you kissed me for the first time. Maybe I was asleep when you whispered to my ear that you loved me. Maybe I was asleep when you broke down all my walls. Maybe I was asleep and I let my guard down.

Your touch was soft, your kiss was warm, and your words were kind. You tapped on my door and I let you in. But now you are colder than a harsh winter.

But hey, the walls of my compartments are starting to build up. At least the wall between you and the porridge has been built, to keep your cold wind from blowing at this warm steaming meal I am having for breakfast this morning.

I eat spoon after spoon of the delicious porridge. The clock ticks 7 o’clock reminding me that I have to depart for work in fifteen minutes. My work starts at 8 and the bus takes 20 minutes to get me to the nearest station, 5 minutes walk from my office, 8 if I walk slowly, 3 minutes if I take longer strides. It means that I have to take the 7.24 bus from the stop near my house. The time it takes for me to walk to that stop is 7 minutes on average with the standard deviation of 0.02 minutes, which means that I almost always get there in 7 minutes.