Overindulgence

Loving food does not make you fat. To me, this is the biggest misconception in our culture today. American puritan roots seem to cause people to equate pleasure with overindulgence. In my view Hedonism is the antithesis of pleasure.

Those who truly love something also treat it with care and respect, savoring quality over quantity.

I, like everyone, have been guilty of mindless gluttony from time to time, but I find that this inhibits my true hunger and desire and therefore my ultimate satisfaction. It is almost as if my taste buds numb to the flavors I consume, everything becomes interchangeable, meaningless and uninspiring.

There is a tipping point in the bell curve of returns. I think we have a limited capacity for pleasure as humans. Perhaps this is why, as MFK Fisher put it, " a good meal is wasted on those newly in love". One pleasure eclipses all others when it is fresh and potent. Would we want a watered down version of either love or cuisine? Well, those of us who savor certainly would not.

Perhaps the root of Hedonism is an internal emptiness, a deep well that cannot be filled, yet begs to be.

Like the sex addict who "indulges" in one night stands, over and over and over, and yet finds no real satisfaction, the American consumer eats and eats and eats, rarely having a decent meal and losing touch with the primal pleasure that one can bring.

Perhaps the problem is not overindulgence, but underindulgence. Contentment is not happiness, eating is not tasting, and fucking is not erotic. I want to be happy. I want cool, unctuous oysters not Long John Silver's. I want raw passion not a casual quickie. But, I am also a woman who chose New York over all the other more practical cities in the country. I am a woman whose sustenance is the primal soul-nourishing flesh of desire and the exotic seasoning of fearless experience. I am a woman who savors.