Passion Went Out of Fashion (E.C.)

J., my daughter, my one shot at immortality and I share similar university diet regimens. Ramen noodles and popcorn.

If you ever find yourself living a day-to-day existance, subsisting solely on microwavable food-like substances, I say, embrace your patheticness. Smear it all over your naked lunch as though it were mustard.

I used to cook. I had a passion for it. Don't know where that passion went. Last I heard it was taking classes at a community college outside Orlando--studying to be air brush newspaper artist--and that it had shacked up with another of my strayed passions, my passion for seizing the moment. Incestuous as it may seem, I wish them both well.

I try to keep in touch with my all of my roving passions. Some write back short, terse Emails. Others send the occasional birthday card. But most have nothing to say to me. I understand their resentments. It is I who abandoned them.

Still, I sometimes choke on nostalgia remembering how close we all used to be; we were like some hapless but lovable imperfect family of 70's TV sitcom fare.

Last week my passion for fashion sent me an Email to tell me that my passion for gin-soaked bar room queens (from Memphis) had been found lifeless in the Chelsea Hotel, NYC, where it had choked on Jim Morrison's nostalgia--we're still waiting for the autopsy results.


Ramen now comes with a miserly "cheddar cheese" flavoring packet. This is a bold step to attract the the less lactose intolerant.

Life with the wife is far less pathetic. In fact, it is nice to know where everything is and when we're running low on coffee.

One draw back to being married to a very traditional woman is that I'm expected to know what to do with a pounder thing and a twister doodad or what others refer to as a hammer and a screwdriver.

One bloated benefit is her traditional womanly bent for cooking huge family meals. Although we are just a family of two bi-peds and about seven furry, yowling, furniture scratching quadrupeds, everyday we all sit down and eat mountains of real food--salad, meat, rice, dessert and cat hair.

Left to my own devices, I'm good with Ramen, popcorn and cereal and look back ten years and wonder who was that fella who used to spend hours in the kitchen making killer lasagna? He's gone the way of wearing suits with Nikes.

So, I go to work, blah blah, boats against the current, etc etc come home yadda yadda ceaselessly borne into my past so on and so forth.

I think I will zap some noodles and hope someone doesn't chuck a hand grenade at me during my evening constitutional.