Monday, November 23, 2009

Nutella

Today my friend lamented to me, "I have an interesting relationship with Nutella. I enjoy it, but I never know where to fit it into my meals." Laughing a bit, I realized that although I've never had a problem consuming Nutella when I feel for it, there are a lot of other things in my life that tend to remain on the sidelines along with his Nutella. Things I enjoy doing, like playing guitar, or listening to all kinds of music that I like, or studying Portuguese, or reading, or exercising. When I'm doing these things, I love it, but somehow I seem to have a lot of difficulty actually working them into my day-to-day activities. I don't know why this is, considering how much time I spend sitting around doing nothing at all.

Another of my Nutellas is really good juice. Like this amazing guava or mango nectar you can get in this big glass bottle. I only ever drink juice like this on its own. Juice like this really isn't a beverage: it's too rich, too thick, and too sweet to be refreshing or to drink with most food, and it's such a good experience on its own that it's kind of a waste to sully it with other flavours. It's like a dessert, or a snack, almost. Only not a subset of these categories. It's its own category altogether: Juice.

Sometimes I'll get a craving for Juice, so I get a cup and go to the fridge. But when I open the fridge, along with the desired Juice, I see orange juice! And seeing the orange juice makes me conscious of being thirsty, and the taste of orange juice is so salient to me that it takes over the part of my mind that imagines eating or drinking things and causes me to seek out these things. And so I have to drink the orange juice. And then by the time I've had some orange juice, I no longer feel for the originally desired Juice. And you can't squander Juice by drinking it when you aren't already salivating for it: futilely trying to create the Full Juice Experience (a.k.a. Finally Drinking the Sweet, Sweet Juice You Were Craving) by simply drinking the Juice any old time. It doesn't work, and then you have no Juice left for the next time you actually crave it and therefore have the precious opportunity to enjoy the Full Juice Experience. I've made this mistake many times before, and I rued my actions.