... There Can Be No More Shameless

It Seems To Me That Our Three Basic Needs, For Food And Security And Love, Are So Mixed And Mingled And Entwined That We Cannot Straightly Think Of One Without The Others.

. . . Word-sniffing . . . Is An Addiction, Like Glue -- Or Snow -- Sniffing In A Somewhat Less Destructive Way, Physically If Not Economically. . . . As An Addict, I Am Almost Guiltily Interested In Converts To My Own Illness . . .

It Was There [dijon], I Now Understand, That I Started To Grow Up, To Study, To Make Love, To Eat And Drink, To Be Me And Not What I Was Expected To Be. It Was There That I Learned It Is Blessed To Receive, As Well As That Every Human Being, No Matter How Base, Is Worthy Of My Respect And Even My Envy Because He Knows Something That I May Never Be Old Or Wise Or Kind Or Tender Enough To Know.

I Am More Modest Now, But I Still Think That One Of The Pleasantest Of All Emotions Is To Know That I, I With My Brain And My Hands, Have Nourished My Beloved Few, That I Have Concocted A Stew Or A Story, A Rarity Or A Plain Dish, To Sustain Them Truly Against The Hungers Of The World.

The Smell Of Good Bread Baking, Like The Sound Of Lightly Flowing Water, Is Indescribable In Its Evocation Of Innocence And Delight... [breadmaking Is] One Of Those Almost Hypnotic Businesses, Like A Dance From Some Ancient Ceremony. It Leaves You Filled With One Of The World's Sweetest Smells... There Is No Chiropractic Treatment, No Yoga Exercise, No Hour Of Meditation In A Music-throbbing Chapel. That Will Leave You Emptier Of Bad Thoughts Than This Homely Ceremony Of Making Bread.