Feed Me!

We have all heard the expression, “food for thought,” but what does it mean, literally, to be attentive to our mental diet?

I can’t say that I’ve developed a food triangle, or even basic food groups for thinking. I do know that I’m hungry all the time, and I’m determined to take stock of what’s in my pantry and maybe even start a food-for-thought diary. If I look around—on the bedside table, on my desk, beside my desk, on the piano stool next to my favorite chair, on the kitchen counter, I can see evidence of hearty meals and healthy snacks, but also of munchies and sugary sweets.

Books seem like well-balanced meals, but perhaps this is only true if you read them one at a time, straight through. Is a book a well-balanced meal if you get up from the table, snack from the fridge, take a walk, visit a café for a bagel and tea, and then sit back down at the table to finish your steak? A good book can be a steak and potatoes experience, or Cajun blackened chicken and okra, or it can be a three-course vegan extravaganza. Currently, I am (r)eating two novels simultaneously, and I have four additional books warming in the microwave. I’m filling my plate this week with Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, and often, after I finish a serving of this entrée, I consume four or five chapters of a murder-mystery manuscript concocted by a dear friend (who is also a terrific cook).

Defrosting, near at hand, I have The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for my next book group. I’m keeping three other books warm and ready for instant refreshment: Blink (signed copy) by Malcolm Gladwell (a Christmas gift from my daughter), Behind Closed Doors: Her Father’s House and Other Stories of Sicily by Maria Messina (on loan from my sister), and The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh (perpetually warm and nourishing; comfort food). Within my sight lines as I write this, I can see five or six more meals ready to be brought to the table.*

If those books are the meals in my larder, what am I enjoying as snacks for thought? This may be more literal than I thought, since I love to read and eat at the same time. There should be a word for this particular bliss. The sounds of crunching and munching are accompaniment and condiment to the euphoria of feasting on words. I reach for a magazine or newspaper with breakfast, lunch, and afternoon refreshments. What could be better . . . not even vitamins. This conversation on conversation inside my head fulfills a whole range of nutritional needs.

We have a subscription to the local daily newspaper that I read standing up in the kitchen, cannibalizing it for the weather, headlines, University highlights, and photos. When I sit down to breakfast or lunch, I seek a broader palate of flavors, one of the weekly or monthly magazines we receive. For light fare, I prefer Newsweek. The photos go well with toast, granola, soups, and sandwiches. For more sophisticated food, The New Yorker provides a richer, deeper experience for the palate. It also engrosses me for longer, stretching lunch right into afternoon snack or possibly all the way into the cocktail hour.

Some weekday meals are leftovers from Sunday’s New York Times. It’s certainly enough to last three or four days! Other classic snacks are FastCompany, any cookbook or food magazine, health newsletters, and, on rare occasions, the catalogs that typically pass through our house in the twenty steps from front door to recycling bin.

If I don’t (r)eat for several days, I feel grumpy and flat. This morning, I located my new issue of FastCompany under my husband’s pile of nutritious reading, and I had it for breakfast. I got calories and energy along with two or three jolts of inspiration in the time it took me to eat a small bowl of granola with walnuts and 2% milk. I clipped a grid of football statistics to discuss with my husband, and I made note of a potential contributor to one of my writing projects. I learned about some new products and trends. Now, after ingesting this food for thought, I am ready and awake to begin the day. Still, I can’t help thinking, “What’s for lunch?”

*Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, Tim Cahill’s Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, Per Petterson’s In the Wake, Liza Kerwin’s With Love: Artists’ Letters and Illustrated Notes, and Top 10 Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, & Ghent from DK Eyewitness Travel.

For Your Writing
Keep a food-for-thought journal for several days, making note of reading material, music, conversation, TV, or other stimuli that jolt you into thinking. After you have kept the journal for awhile, choose one or several entries to develop. What thinking arose from your snack on an article in the Sunday paper? Did you sip on an overheard conversation? What thinking arose from the taste?

Quotation for Percolation
“How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.” Vincent van Gogh