Vegan chocolate chip cookies. Photo: Kari Sullivan. Creative Commons, 2.0
What Anxiety Attacks Are Made Of
Yesterday, the answer was sugar and spice and everything nice.
I was having an almost perfect day modeling the new Zen.
I try not to think on how the collapsing Western imaginary throws the Republic out with the bathwater.
I am surrounded by cared-for plants and animals.
I take time to compliment the sun on its transit.
A light, California-Thai lunch, boosted with some borrowed Kaffir-Limes.
A first twinge, when I realize that I really ought to call them Makrut.
I water the tomatoes listening to David Harvey lecture on the labor theory of value.
Toward late afternoon, I decide to celebrate my equanimity by making cookies.
The oven warms, and as I crack eggs into the dry ingredients, I smell something odd.
I open the oven door, and there I see it: M’s only N95 mask, melting obscenely on the metal racks.
I am breathing the toxic plastic of the breath protector. It’s like seeing inside your own eyeball.
I scream FUCK! twice in rapid succession.
All four dogs run into the narrow galley kitchen, barking wildly.
The cookies are a toll house, and I must pay the fare.
