Food and...

[Note: I started typing this on Tuesday, the day after our classes started, but didn´t have time to finish. Plenty more has happened since then, but I wanted to finish this thought first.]

Yesterday was a very good day. As I was reflecting on what made it that way (calling my family for the first time, a good conversation in class, fun group activities), I realized that food had a lot to do with it. For the first time since we got our host families, yesterday´s meals all included something other than pasta, rice, or potatoes. At breakfast I was met with a large plate of papaya, pineapple, watermelon, and banana. Lunch and dinner were broccoli, rice, and salsa. It got me thinking.


It is amazing how closely tied my mood is to my eating habits. (My family will testify.) When I eat well I feel good physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. The thing is, that is such a privileged fact to even know about myself. It requires a long enough period of access to fresh, good food that I know it makes me feel wonderful.


Now, I live in a world (heavens, a city) where most people do not know what that feels like. I was going to write ¨know that such a reality exists,¨but not only would that be hyperbole, my guess is that most people know damn well what I and millions of other people sleep well each night despite our relatively full knowledge that their realities exist.

And I don´t reall know what my active response is. To quit eating quality food (that is, to stop supporting local, small-scale farmers and the public policy that allows me that food) seem like a pretentious but ineffective attempt at solidarity. It seems to me that solidarity doesn´t mean that we all agree to accept, for eternity, the wost conditions in existence in the name of equality. That seems a whole lot more like giving up, and the more I learn -- and the more overwhelmed I get -- the more I want to continue. As dad interprets the psalm (141? 145? one of them) verse ¨my tears are my food,¨the more I cry and scream, the more fuel there is under the fire.

So we have come full circle back to food. Not really sure where this leaves me. This will, I´m sure, be a pretty constant thought train through the rest of the semester (rest of my life). It continues to unfold in my mind.