The hypochondria flared

It has been said that the biggest hurdle for a hypochondriac is knowing that this is the case, but not having a reliable means to distinguish between worry that is part of the condition, and sensations that indicate the presence of disease which is to be acted upon. The two are intertwined; were they not, it would not be hypochondria

Fortunately, she had precisely such a reliable mean. Whenever she was truly sick, it would meow at her and try to give comfort at every turn. Otherwise, it would demand food, regardless of how long it had been since last time, or how much was left in the bowl. As is the case with such things; cats, too, require a means to tell the difference

It rained

One moment, the sun had scorched the park with its indifferent rays. The next, the skies had opened up the floodgates and let loose a month’s worth of wetness in mere moments. One moment, he had been enjoying a leisurely stroll; the next, he had been running for cover, crowding into an oft overlooked gazebo for shelter

The thing is, he didn’t mind this sudden burst of social interaction. In the face of the weather gods, we are all equal, all distinctions rendered arbitrary

Alas, the moment ended, and the impromptu crowd dissipated. He would have preferred to remain in that temporary state of forced reprieve for a bit longer. Perhaps, he thought, it is the nature of such moments that they end, and can only be fully appreciated in retrospect

It was a disaster. Everything had gone wrong

The main course had caught fire. Quick hands made sure the flames didn’t catch anything else, luckily enough, but what remained was a barely identifiable lump of coal. No amount of fast talk about new recipes could save this one

Worse, the dessert had somehow become a foul noxious brew of indescribable pugnacity, and had to be tossed out before it, too, caught fire. The appetizers, meanwhile, were somehow still mildly damp

Worse still, the guests had arrived early, leaving no room to improvise. The yard was a cavalcade of dear friends and relatives, all smiles and happy greetings

He took a deep breath, and was filled with determination. He deemed that a kitchen miracle would no longer be possible, and readjusted his aim for something more attainable: a revered family memory that would be talked about for generations, with the discomforts of the present moment gradually filed off with each retelling

The timetables were tricky in this part of town this time of year

During ordinary time, buses departed every ten minutes. During summertime, the city imagined demand would be reduced due to vacations and such, and so buses departed every fifteen minutes. In this particular part of town, this made a significant difference. The average time to walk between stops is seven minutes, which means that an unfortunate soul that just missed a bus during ordinary time faced a choice: stand around patiently, or take a one stop walk to have something to do. During summertime, however, this calculation is different; travelers who arrived at a bus stop without having paid too much attention to arrival times, had a 50/50 shot at shaving a couple of minutes off the wait. The longer one thought about it, the worse the odds got

The city did not pay too much heed to this calculus, but local residents thought about it more than they would ever dare to admit

He was a sociologist. Not just any sociologist, mind, but a very specific kind. He was a sociologist focused and centered around the formation and development of specialized discourses. This is rather a mouthful, so when explaining it, he preferred to say that he studied how it comes to be that people with jobs start to talk funny after a while. His big joy – or, in science speak, method – was to eavesdrop on people who talked shop; the more inscrutable and esoteric the lingo, the better. When arriving at new sites of study, his catchphrase was:

Take me to your meetings

He was standing still. Not moving forward, not moving backwards. This was the spot, and this was where he was standing

Those who walked past gave him a glance. What is this strange behavior? Standing still, not moving? Such oddness, completely out there

But he knew. Not about the glancing or the silent judgment – that slipped his mind like so much water on goose feathers. No, he knew that this one spot was the only shadowy retreat before several miles of sun-strewn asphalt, and that one should not enter such hostile terrain unprepared. And thus, he stood still, cooling off until it inevitably became time to heat up yet again

She called it reality weather. The kind of weather it had been when real things happened – dentist appointments, unexpected history tests, first dates, job interviews, final departures, breakups and break-ins. The conjunctional moments when one state of being transitioned into another. When reality happened

Reality weather is overcast, slightly windy and somewhat adjacent to rain, past present or future. It promises nothing but what it is, does not forebode, does not invite, will not relent. Reality happens when you have somewhere to be and something to do; the weather follows suit, as ever attuned to the moods it affects and instills

He entered the pizza joint. It was a small place, as these things usually were. He noted that the monitors displaying the prices of the various eats had been recently taped over, such that the old prices were replaced by new ones. This seemed indicative to him. Not of anything regarding the particular joint, but of a broader phenomenon. We live in the ruins of technological marvels we do not understand, and when they inevitably break down, we have to jury-rig them in unexpected ways

He ordered a falafel, and hoped that this particular technology would not be lost any time soon

The date did not begin well. He had begun talking, and through some miracle of outlandishly misplaced industriousness and fecundity, he had kept talking. It was market efficiency this and competitive advantage that, an endless stream of words which, for all its forward momentum, seemed to emanate from a parallel universe, a completely alternate social reality completely disjointed from ours. At length – we should not understate just how long this unit of time was – she deemed the meal and the date over, and so spoke her first words of the evening:

The free market has spoken. It says no

It had been A Day. It begun even before it began, with an oversleep not quite long enough to be catastrophic, but severe enough to cause a non-zero amount of stress. Then the tram arrived three minutes early, meaning it’d be a wait for the next one. At work, a shipment had been misplaced, meaning a third of everything was out of stock. This came into full effect when no less than three literal busloads of schoolkids on their way to a soccer tournament descended upon the place and wanted – you guessed it – those very things. On top of it all, some sort of audit or inspection happened, which meant every five minutes some obscure question had to be answered, preferably with polite professionalism

It had been a day. But now it was over, and there was only one comfort food strong enough to unwind from it all. It was time for the one and only

Calzone sushi