à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Memory
New Diagnosis: Post Traumatic Stuff Disorder
Post Traumatic Stuff Disorder: When Cluttered Environments Trigger Anxiety and Dread Each night along the Camino de Santiago, I sorted and organized the contents of my backpack, leaving behind what I no longer needed. Sometimes all I threw away were cheese rinds and Band-Aid wrappers, essentially weightless, taking up little space. Other times I left … Continue reading
Turkey is Not a Synonym for Gratitude
I didn’t always dread Thanksgiving. Growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s, I looked forward to it. I loved the special dishes my mother prepared (sauteed mushrooms and onions being one). I enjoyed making relish, hand cranking cranberries and an orange, rind and all, through a metal meat grinder and watching it ooze red … Continue reading
Dear Sugar: I’ve Filed for Divorce
Dear Sugar (C12H22O11), We’ve had a good run, not quite half a century together, longer than many marriages. I thought that by reaching for you when I felt blissful and blue, I proved my devotion to you. It never crossed my mind that you were a parasite who never reciprocated. Your complex molecule has romped, … Continue reading
Budapest: Beauty or Beast?
It’s Halloween, a chance to contemplate what is more creepy: a truly beautiful person masquerading as a hideous beast, or an attractive costume that camouflages beastly hate? Two very different news items on Hungary, one on beauty, the other on beastliness, grabbed my attention in the last week. The first, the results of a Conde … Continue reading
Yes, I am a S.N.O.B.
The first time I was called a snob, it wasn’t to my face. Rather, it was written in a bathroom stall in the girls’ locker room at my high school. To see my name and my boyfriend’s inked and linked with “snob” stung, even more so since my pants were down. I was 15 and … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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