I began reading Steve Hagen’s book Buddhism Plain and Simple last night, which is on the dry side. Early on, there is an image whose subject can’t be immediately identified. It sort of looks like a man lying down, but not definitely, but the author says that if you keep looking at the picture, it will become very obvious, beyond any doubt, what it is.
I looked for about 15 minutes. I turned the book this way and that, I squinted, I crossed my eyes. No clue. Finally, I had to go look at the answer: it’s a cow. I went back to the picture. For the life of me, I could not see a cow.
Frustrated, and despite the late hour, I went up and knocked on Tom’s door. He looked at the picture. He couldn’t tell what it was. I told him it was a cow. He couldn’t see a cow.
Fortunately, Steve Hagen has a website. I sent an email today begging for a cow-spotting clue. In the meantime, I put that book aside—I’m going to feel vaguely resentful until I see the cow—and started Gil Fronsdal’s The Issue at Hand, which is a collection of his transcribed dharma talks.
In non-dharma reading, I just finished Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot, which I loved, the first half more so than the second. In the second half she kept mentioning people I hadn’t heard of, and I wasn’t sure if it was just because I’d forgotten them already (entirely possible) or if it was a literary technique. Also, the first half contained long stretches of narrative, whole stories leading into other stories, whereas the second half was presented more as brief vignettes. The change of structure was a bit unsettling.
But I certainly recommend it, if only for the line where the mother says to do something with the dog and the little brother says, “Please don’t refer to Albert as ‘the dog.’”
I’m now reading Help: The Original Human Dilemma, by Garret Keizer, which is about how humans help each other or not.
When I was a teenager, I used to find it restful to open the refrigerator door and just stand there gazing into the depths, probably with my mouth hanging open, until my mother came along and said, “Close the refrigerator door.” (I told you I had a terrible childhood.)
The same soothing effect can be had, it turns out, in the cookies and candy aisle at Whole Foods. I like to go over there (not without mixed feelings: the place is full of yuppies!) and just look at all the items, and read some labels, and buy anything I haven’t tried before that looks like it might be good.
I tried a Goldie’s Premium Carob Bar yesterday and liked it, though some of its appeal comes from its not containing sugar or caffeine: healthy! I suspect I won’t want another after about the fourth one.
Country Choice Organic Sandwich Cremes Duplex are sandwich cookies with one vanilla side, one chocolate side and vanilla crème in the middle. (Both vanilla would be fine as far as I'm concerned.) The cookie part is not overly sweet, so they compensated with extremely sweet filling, which is also a bit too soft, so that the overall cookie is a bit too soft. Not bad, but I probably won’t buy them again, though they appear to be vegan.
Nature’s Path EnviroKids Organic Animal Cookies (vanilla flavor) are extremely terrible. They taste like chalk with a bit of cinnamon added. I suspect they added the cinnamon so the cookies wouldn’t taste like just plain chalk. I’m going to go so far as to throw these out (i.e., put them in the compost bin).
If something isn’t very good but it’s not terrible, it usually gets eaten fairly quickly: “Uh oh, these aren’t very good—I’d better finish them right away.” I suppose that’s the exact opposite of having a little bit of something that’s really good. I keep hoping to become the kind of person who prefers a simple piece of fruit for dessert, but so far I still prefer a whole package of passable sandwich cookies.
On to another Nature’s Path product, now with a bit of trepidation: Organic Lemon Poppy Signature Series Cookies. Same thing: chalk, this time with lemon flavoring and poppy seeds. I’m going to compost these, and then I suppose I’ll be kicking myself when we’re in the heart of the global-warming-caused famine: “If only I could have those Organic Lemon Poppy Signature Series Cookies back!”
New Morning Graham-Wiches in Honey Graham & Peanut Butter Crème flavor: good. We’ll have to see how they compare to some other peanut butter sandwich cookies I have at home, which are so good I've bought two packages of them lately.
Maybe I should just rename this whole blog Junk Food Review. It’s just like Vegan Lunch Box, if Mrs. Vegan Lunch Box were to eat packaged food full of grease and sugar all day, which she might well do if she aspires to be large and surly.
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