In Eat Memory, Louie depicts his loss of the ability to eat and having to obtain food from a formula and tube through his stomach. The way he says “fed the tube” rather than “ate” or “ate through the tube” effectively depicts the artificialness of feeding himself and the sadness of no longer being able to enjoy food. I thought about how he used the words eat vs. feed to describe his experience. Feeding means to give food but eating means to ingest, taste, swallow, and nourish through means of the mouth. Through the juxtaposition of these two words, the reader can feel the pain and exhaustion of feeding for survival compared to eating for pleasure. The words “G-tube,” “formula,” and “feed” show how unnatural and dehumanizing the process of having cancer and going through treatments is. He discusses this right before describing his experience with Dr. L and another ENT. I feel like this could have been done to show further the dehumanizing nature of cancer through the doctors and hospitals and how they are often deadpan and emotionless in a hospital that is all gray and white. The writer effectively creates two worlds: one where he can eat good food and nourish himself and another where he has to feed a tube and be in a hospital with doctors being condescending towards him.
This reading combined three stories into Jo Ann’s life: her dissolving marriage, her dying dog, and the events at work. She crafted them together to comment on the power of grief and loss. Her marriage she doesn’t know what to do with. She speaks about it in a way that is both acknowledging and denying the situation. She does this too with her collie. The dog is nearing its death but she continues to care for it and keep it alive. She does this again after the shooting. Where she sees the events and knows that they are true but refuses to believe them. She clutches onto what she wants to be true. In this, Jo Ann herself lives in the fourth state of matter. She is not in full denial, she has not accepted things, and she will not move on. The circular nature of the story highlights this. She cares for the dog, deals with her husband, and goes to work over and over again only to be disrupted by the shooting. The final line referring to the insect trapped in amber creates the final connection between her life and the stasis of the fourth state of matter.
“What’s more base than sustenance delivered directly to the stomach, like gavage to geese? I babbled to my wife about bodily integrity, how mine was, after these many years, unmarred, unpierced, un-broken-boned. Never mind the human condition. You are a body, first and last.”
In Eat, Memory, David Wong Louie makes sense of losing the ability to consume food, grappling with the brutality of throat cancer. My heart panged as Wong Louie lost the ability to talk, to even scream, yet he articulated the pain of this journey and transition so beautifully in writing. This piece made me ruminate on things that make us human and connected, and not just animals. I have been paying special attention to openings and endings, and I found this piece had interesting ones. The work ends with Wong Louie watching his dog eat, the animalistic hunger. There is almost a yearning to eat as the dog does, but Wong Louie misses the full sensations of eating. Breathing, sniffing, chewing. The attention of detail inspired me Wong Louie put in this piece— in reflecting on memory, you can almost remember such minute details of something that is gone and you can’t have anymore; for example, the loss of a person, or for Wong Louie, the act of eating. I loved the specific detail of eating, and how he acted for occasions— eating as an intimacy. This intimacy created such a human piece. The quote above stood out to me due to trying to remove the human aspect and the association between animals and humans and eating that the ending left you with. The comparison to geese, the body over the human condition. But this piece shows how something so manual can really be much deeper, an intimate ritual like described in the dinners Wong Louie would have with his wife. Eating wasn’t just something to keep you alive like an animal. This piece inspired me to look deeper at something so simple, and to look into the human experience, and what small things inspire me. Making a whole emotional journey and arc through something simple is really a creative feat, and inspiring.
HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA: A REMEMBERANCE – KIESE LAYMON
– Have encountered the concept of living versus surviving versus slowly dying, etc. before, but it always sticks with me.
– Meanings/understandings of belief & knowing – he sort of defines his own “knowing” somewhere on the 12th page as ‘what he needs to tell himself.’
– Seeing and being seen
– Freedom vs. survival
– The refrain of “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”
– The gravity of shame/guilt
– Understanding the people in our life to be complete in and of themselves, with their own distinct realities
– Not being able to make people feel how they made you feel (& sometimes, trying to anyway)
– In the world of this essay, at least, sometimes the reasons for wanting to end your own life can be very similar to the reasons for wanting to end someone else’s life, which had never consciously crossed my mind
– Resisting the urge to separate ourselves from “bad” people
– THE BRAVERY OF REMEMBERING
EAT, MEMORY: A LIFE WITHOUT FOOD – DAVID WONG LOUIE
– A reminder of how what’s important & the way we experience the world – (through our senses and far beyond) can vary so drastically between people
– The word “OUR” – have started circling it in our readings – in this reading was struck by the intimacy of a shared favorite (p. 40)
– What is spiritual/divine to different people
– The difference in how we deal with/understand our health declining as formerly healthy people vs. chronically ill people
– How apparently smoothly he adapted to a complete change of life made for him by necessity – I like to delude myself into feeling like I have some measure of control in life, despite that being not quite the case, so the idea of not being able to choose is panic-inducing – but, I suppose, choosing how we deal with something can lull us back into our sense of agency and control.
– “I can’t relate to that kind of beauty anymore.”
THE FOURTH STATE OF MATTER – JO ANN BEARD
– Struck by how misdirected I was by the beginning of the essay
– The very real dog as a metaphor/point of comparison throughout the essay
– What we are able to cope with/adapt to/get used to – how we form our routines & how we cling to them – why, scientifically, do we do that?
– “The face of love”
– The baby squirrel – why are things so sad when they end at the beginning, and does everyone feel this way, at least instinctually (if not intellectually,) or does it vary
– Everything in this story felt like a diversion but I suppose life often also feels the same way
– Happiness versus enjoyment
– Collateral – losses we don’t account for
– Definitions of/thresholds for suffering
– The use of hindsight in the present tense
– The bargains we make & how they are so human but often make us feel or seem inhuman
– To our dogs, we are always children
– How we remember & rewrite the past, usually so we can cope with our realities
– The line between selfishness and selflessness, if there is one
– The things we do to feel in control, the things we do to hold on
There were two lines that stuck with me from How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Other in America. The first one was on page 11, where he says, “I’m a waste of writing’s time”. I thought that was a unique way of expressing this thought. He is trying to say that he feels like he is wasting his time writing stories and poems that have little meaning and feel empty, just like he feels empty. Changing the line and saying that he is wasting writing’s time adds to the emptiness and burden that he feels.
I also loved the title of this piece. It really draws you into the story and the ending of the story has the same line as the title. I was thinking a lot about what the title means. I’m wondering if it is about losing a little bit of hope in the nation?
“He pictures himself holding the gun with both hands, arms straight out and steady; Clint Eastwood, only smarter.” – Jo Ann Beard in “The Fourth State of Matter”
Honestly, this piece really impressed me. The writing was very matter-of-factly and I expected this to be a piece about the boredom of life or her dying collie. I just didn’t expect how this story would end. While reading about the shooting I had to think about our last class discussion when we talked about Sloan’s “The Green Room” and why she included her father’s POV. How could she know what he felt? Did she just want her fantasy to be true? I felt the same way when Beard included the shooter’s POV. I guess it is a natural thing to find reason in everything we do, especially the things we simply can’t understand. Beard including the shooter’s POV feels like her way of coping with trauma, included for her benefit, not the reader’s benefit. It’s like filling in the blanks. I really enjoyed that and although that is a break with non-fiction since she can’t know about this it is the closest you can get.
Furthermore, she seemed to link her sick/old collie to incidents of death or loss. She always refers back to the dog, i.e. after her husband calls. I wonder though, why doesn’t her dog have a name in the story? Is the dog representative for Chris? There are other dogs in the story and it is only hers that is not referred to by a name. I wonder what you make of this.
The Fourth State of Matter stood out to me within the readings because it made me think about something that I feel like applied to The Green Room as well, and that is the author’s ability to write about a traumatic event, while at the same time being able to write about other themes that are unrelated, and allow them to have the same level of significance, if not more, within a piece. After reading Beard’s essay you may be inclined to say that the main event was a shooting, but it felt to me like the piece was more about loneliness, human connection, and sadness. Her dog, the collie, who she is unable to put down I think shows her unwillingness to move on in life not only with her dog but also coming to terms with her husband leaving her. There are certain moments that show her still holding on to him. On page 7 she says “i need to call him back because he’s suffering.” even though she acknowledges the ridiculousness of it by previously stating that he needs reassurance so that he can have fun on his bike ride. Three quarters of this piece is not spent focusing on the shooting, but rather her day to day life and routine of taking care of her dog, going to work, dealing with her ex, and I think that shows what the real focus of her story is.
– The simple thing of eating that we take for granted. The way the authors journey went from simple eating to the awareness of what that entails. How grateful and conscious we have to be how we treat our bodies.
– ” Previous patients, the nurses said, had quit treatment midway and taken their cancers home.” this thought came to my mind as what is offered as a treatment is almost a disease in itself.
-“Dr. L seemed gleeful: he was “very excited” about my tumer”. I judged him as almost a sadistic accomplishment.
-“I settled on Fibersource HN, 300 calories and 13.5 grams of protein, a product of Nestle, the same company that gives the world Gerber baby food, Haagen Dazs, Kit Kat bars and Purina Dog Chow.” I find this almost like a horror story the same companies that are supplying the unhealthy living products to babies, adults and our pet friends are also supplying us with remedies for these cancers, its as almost they create the cancer and then offer more products to make more money out of our ignorance and suffering.
“When Dr. H discussed my tumor with another oncologist, I overheard him comparing its size to a plum. My first thought: What kind of plum? Italian, Santa Rosa, Greengage?”
The start of the essay “Eat, Memory” describes in great detail the author’s love of food, talking about the meals he would have during different times of the day, as well as his general and very specific preferences for meals and snacks. It is clear that Louie has vast knowledge on different types of foods, and is will take any opportunity he can to put that knowledge to use. Additionally, it is shown from my chosen passage that food is something that is always on his mind. When the doctor compares his tumor’s size to a plum, he starts wondering what specific type of plum the doctor could possibly be referring to, and lists several examples that I have never heard of. This very evident passion that Louie has for food is what made his ordeal all the more tragic and frustrating.
“Seeing food now doesn’t make me hungry; neither does reading about it or thinking about it. Drop a steak in front of me and what am I going to do? Will my mouth water or my blood pressure rises, my pleasure centers spark in my brain? None of this happens, because it can’t.”
In Louie’s “Eat, Memory,” this quote forced me to consider life and the simple things I take for granted. Taste and food itself are things that I appreciate but they seem like a normal part of life. Being confronted by the loss of food forces you to reconsider your own experience with it. Louie’s thoughts on food, the detail he provides, and then this quote where he denies hunger is striking. By saying “because it can’t” Louie accurately portrays his struggle, and you can feel the years of lost food. It’s a relatable feeling too, even if the specific experience is not relatable. How often do we tell ourselves we don’t want something simply because we know that we cannot want something?
If you tell yourself that over and over again, if you deny yourself, it over and over again, then eventually maybe you will believe it and it might get easier. Even then, sometimes thoughts are inevitable and Louie portrays this longing and acceptance in all its complexities.
“Never mind the human condition. You are a body, first and last”
I also love food, I think I’m always hungry so this piece felt really impactful. It’s terrifying that one thing can derail our bodies and we are left to deal with the fallout forever in order to survive. Wong Louie is able to convey such a specific feeling of acceptance and persistence. The will to survive is so strong that we will sacrifice so much integral to what our lives were like before. The way that he talks about his relationship with his wife feels so genuine and reminds the reader of why he has made this choice to live without food. There is so much emotion is the catastrophic dinner scene towards the end of the scene where you feel as though you are there and the way that he tells his story allows you to predict the doom and discomfort before it has come. It’s both hopeless and hopeful, reminding the reader to appreciate food every moment that we can.
Eat, Memory
A Life Without Food by David Wong Louie
The main character had such an affinity for food which is clear by his vivid descriptions of the food he would eat and the traditional dinners out with his family. Now the progression of his cancer has taken away his ability to taste, smell, speak, and eat. The part that stood out to me the most was his comparison of him and his dog, “ All the dog does is ingest a substance for the sole purpose of loading up the gastrointestinal tract: the same joyless thing that I do. Breathe, I would tell her, if I could. Sniff. Relish the chicken-and-liver recipe. Chew.” These final sentences emphasize how nonhuman his procedure has caused him to feel. He is more like a dog than human. He can no longer fuel his body with the joys he used to have from food. Food only serves as a mode of replenishing his body with the nutrients it needs, nothing more nothing less. It’s instinctual. Although, he is alive and does what is needed to sustain himself, a mindset his mother taught him, his quality of life has severely diminished. Leading to a mental battle of contemplating at what cost?
“I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me. When he looks over at me, it’s with an expression I’ve seen before. It’s the way he looks at the dog on the blanket.”
The Fourth State of Matter, like other pieces we’ve read of Jo Ann Beard’s, is an enormously successful work. What she manages to portray is not just a divorce and not just a horrific shooting, but rather a portrait of a woman who happens to survive both of those things. I love the matter-of-fact way that Beard tells the story as well as the thread of the border collie that follows her through the piece. I wasn’t exactly how to interpret the dog/blanket/laundry phenomenon — a representation of the cyclical nature of life? A reflection of a woman caring for everyone but herself? Or, as the husband sees her: a pitiful being. Regardless of what exactly it means, the dogs in The Fourth State of Matter are stabilizing forces for Beard as she loses everything she loves. She sleeps with them around her, holds them when the worst has happened, and stores her love for them in the stars.
” With the G-tube, I did not eat — I fed the tube. My mind did not equate the formula with food, as other patients do — how could I confuse the two?”
This essay was heartwrenching, especially reading how an action, that many of us usually do in our lives is something that was taken away from Louie. Viewing food as a memory and a form of enjoyment, and recalling those specific tastes in detail to then transitioning to a life with cancer and only experiencing food in the form of a liquid and not recalling the taste in detail highlighted the contrast between life before cancer and life during cancer. I could sense the excitement and joy when Louie was recalling all those foods he had eaten before his cancer progressed. It felt like he had a bit of hope left and was longing for those tastes and waited for hours for his cancer to be cured. However, as we read along through the essay we can see how his hope diminishes. As a reader, I sensed how he lost hope when describing his treatment process and how he couldn’t taste foods anymore after getting the G tube.
“Eat, Memory: a life without food”
By David Wong Louie
“People dine. We eat consciously, looking, tasting, smelling, gauging texture and temperature. We share. We talk. My wife and I seemed to talk differently when there was food between us. We loved restaurants, loved to go out and indulge in the rituals of a shared meal: settling in at our table, scanning the room, dissecting the menu, faking our knowledge of wine.”
This passage in “Eat, Memory” stood out to me because of the description Louie gives of such a mundane act. Most of us eat three meals a day, and we dine out on occasion. These things we do not think of as an “act,” a “scene,” instead they are just part of life. When Louie lost his ability to eat and dine out, he was able to capture the joy that comes from eating in a way that would otherwise go unnoticed. He does this by drawing attention to every single step of dining-out, from sitting at the table to receiving the food. Throughout the essay he captures the essence of eating, and why we, as a people, derive joy from it. I particularly enjoy this example because of the stylistic choice he makes in sentence length, starting with shorter sentences that seem to pass by quickly, to ending with a longer one, reminding me of eating slowly versus savoring each bite. I waitress in the summers, so I constantly see couples dining and enjoying each other’s company; however, I had not thought of eating in this way until reading this essay. Louie forces the reader to slow down, examine the parts of their life they may find mundane, and bring meaning to them.
“You have control over this” he explains in his professor voice “You can decide how long she suffers.”
This makes my heart pound. Absolutely not, I cannot do it. And then I weaken and say what I really want: for her to go to sleep and not wake up, just slip out of her skin and into another world.
“Exactly” he says
I think this part is interesting for two reasons. Firstly it shows how hard it is for her to accept the coming loss of her dog yet she knows that it’s time for the dog to die but she just can not make the decision herself. Grief and loss are a large part of this story, as well as the control over those things. The grief of her dog, her husband, her coworker/friends, and the uncontrollable part of that loss. Yet for the dog, there is some control for her, some time she gets to spend before she has to really feel that grief.
Also the end: “‘exactly’ he says”, is the exact same line as the end of the story and I wonder if it is in reference to this moment and their decision of loss and grief and the control we have over it. I do not have a full thought on this yet but I wonder what the connection/meaning could be.
The Fourth State of Matter by Jo Ann Beard is a story about grief. It takes three forms in the essay: her dog’s declining health, her relationship with her husband falling apart, and the tragedy at her job. I really enjoyed this reading. Beard does a great job of connecting elements throughout the story, effective metaphors, and foreshadowing. For example, the way she ties in facts or observations about space since the job she had at that time focused on space psychics. One quote that stood out to me was at the end. “I imagine it as a place of stillness, where the particles of dust stop spinning and hang motionless in deep space” I love how she connects a description of space to the amber necklace Chris gave her. This expresses how she feels when she’s in shock right after his death. Also, I think that the title is important. The fourth state of matter is plasma, it seems like the title refers to both what they’re studying and also blood. ‘Plasma is blood’ like Beard writes, so I think the title is referencing the violence that happens in the story.
My entire life, especially as a fat, disabled woman, I have been taught to put my own self aside. As a student and student leader, I’ve been taught to leave space for others, to lift up others, to learn from others, to sympathize with others, and to empathize with others. That said, in a creative writing class, I think we can give ourselves permission to think of ourselves as we learn to share our own stories while studying the writing styles of others.
I found it difficult to read “Eat, Memory” without projecting myself onto the author’s story. I share his passion for food and for dining. He said, “I can tell you that eating nice food and drinking good wine with my wife was the best thing ever.” I can say that this sentiment is true. The most enjoyable moments of life are spent putting a bite of delicious food in your mouth after a glass of Champagne or red wine while sitting across from a person or people that you love and admire. Singing a lead role in a musical is a close second.
Wong Louie’s story resonated with me, especially the part when he was told to choose between his voice and his ability to swallow. What really got me was this line, “If it had been up to me, I would have chosen the same. Swallowing, every time. I imagined the first thing I would eat — hot ramen noodles searing my throat on their way down.”
This reminds me of the choice fat people have to make when their doctors are pushing gastric bypass weight loss surgery. Gastric bypass is a risky medical procedure that results in a bypass of 99% of a person’s stomach. Complications are so prevalent that hospitals created an acronym, GBGB, gastric bypass gone bad. Every person I know who has had the surgery is unable to eat more than one or two bites of food, a few times a day.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a message asking if I had considered the surgery, telling me how great her life bas been since recently getting it herself. I asked her if she could eat. She said yes, but only a few bites here or there. I told her that I did not consider that any way to live and that my life was already great. While some may argue that not being able to eat is a small price to pay for a thin body, I radically oppose this notion. Giving up the ability to eat is no small price to pay. In fact, every other person I know that has had the surgery regrets it and would instantly trade their thinner body for the ability to eat. Imagine sitting at a table full of Thanksgiving dinner, taking one bite, and then watching your family eat, for the rest of your life.
Wong Louis does such an incredible job describing his experience losing the ability to eat, and to me, it just illustrates how barbaric it is to expect fat people to make this choice.
Another negative to gastric bypass, besides death and the loss of the ability to eat, is the loss of the ability to absorb nutrition. The part of the intestine which absorbs vitamins and minerals is bypassed, and in order to stay alive, those who have this surgery must purchase and take expensive vitamins and supplements for the rest of their lives. Other complications include, but are not limited to pain, infection, tearing, bleeding, nausea, bloating, weakness, sweating, fainting, diarrhea, gallstones, hernias, ulcers, blood clots, and malnutrition leading to osteoporosis and anemia. Furthermore, most people who have the surgery gain the weight back.
The narrative is that giving up eating, death, and these horrible side effects are better for you than being fat. The message is that being fat is something to avoid at all costs.
I know this story is about David Wong Louie’s experience with cancer, and it’s not about me or fat people. It’s about eating, and how it’s the best, and what losing it is like, which is a universal experience, and that is what this reading made me think about.
I liked how the author used sensory words to appreciate food and relive memories. Specifically, the following drew my attention, “People dine. We eat consciously, looking, tasting, smelling, gauging texture and temperature. We share. We talk. My wife and I seemed to talk differently when there was food between us. We loved restaurants, loved to go out and indulge in the rituals of a shared meal: settling in at our table, scanning the room, dissecting the menu, faking our knowledge of wine. After our orders arrived, we dug in, tasted each other’s dishes, critiqued the kitchen’s hits and misses. For hours we sipped and chewed.” The interesting choice of sensory words like “tasting”, “smelling” and “gauging”, the simple and short sentences help create that impact. It helps create a yearning for the sense of taste among readers just as it depicts the author’s longing. The repetition of the verb “loved” in the past tense, further establishes the yearning making it a moment and memory in the past that cannot be relived again. This intentional impact hooked me as a reader.
Additionally, using the dog as an elongated metaphor establishes how something as simple as eating, which we take for granted, is a big part of why we are human. Being able to enjoy and savor our meal is a big part of feeling alive. With that comparison, the author left a lingering feeling of yearning and a sense of gratitude. It is interesting how the author builds compassion among readers through these little choices of wording, sentences, and even literary devices.
“I drop the gun to my chest. I’m so sad and I can’t really see a way out of what I’m feeling but I’m leaning on memory for help.”
This sentence I think really encapsulates the parts of this piece that hit me the most. The way the author portrays his struggle with mental health, simplifying such dark, overwhelming, and complicated emotions into “i’m so sad”–especially in a moment so gut wrenching as attempting suicide. This sort of matter of fact writing style perpetuates the piece and makes it a fascinating read, since it allows for the reader to make their own conclusions and insert their own emotions onto the writing; personally I think this makes it a very powerful story. Lastly, the “I’m leaning on memory for help” segment really hit me as a unique but extremely successful way to depict trying to find happiness in a moment outside of the present. I think the simplified language also works very well here, since the imagery is so well crafted that we can visualize exactly what coping mechanism the author used; but without taking away from the atmosphere of trudging and suffering through the swamp of life.
In “The Fourth State of Matter”, Jo Ann Beard tells a devastating story through mundane, everyday experiences. A large portion of the essay is focused on her day-to-day life and the people in it. We as the reader get used to a certain rhythm, which is suddenly interrupted when Beard reveals what is going on in Gang Lu’s mind, and the contents of his letter to his sister. She divides not only the essay but her life into two parts, referring to the day of the shooting as “the last day of the first part of (her) life” (Beard, 11). Beard describes the shooting, which she did not witness herself, in a matter-of-fact manner using simple language and short sentences. She then recounts her own reaction to the shooting. Even in this emotionally charged section of the essay, she includes minor details, like how she notices her husband is “wearing a shirt (she’s) never seen before” (Beard, 16). The way Beard chose to write this story makes it easy for the reader to step into her shoes and experience the tragedy through her.
In David Wong Louie’s “Eat Memory,” he reflects on his journey through cancer treatment and the profound impact it has had on his life, specifically his relationship with food. David Wong Louie’s narrative is hard hitting and raw, delving into both the emotional toll of battling a severe illness such as cancer.
Throughout his narrative, he discusses how much he used to love food and how much this inability to truly eat and enjoy something he used to love has affected him. Something that we take for granted every single day, the ability to enjoy food, is something that he has lost. In losing that ability, he has lost a piece of himself. Towards the end of his essay, he writes, “Five years without a morsel of food passing between my lips has made me a stranger. Seeing food now doesn’t make me hungry; neither does reading about it or thinking about it.” Loving and enjoying food was part of his identity, part of who he was. He recalls the meals he used to eat with loved ones. He recalls the memories that go along with meals as well as the rituals of dinner and other meals. He lost that ability to love and even consume food and everything that comes with, and therefore he lost a piece of himself.
This essay was not a story that was begging for pity. Instead, I interpreted it as a sign and a reminder to appreciate the little things in life that we take for granted every day, because you truly won’t realize their importance until they’re gone. This message is highlighted at the end of his essay when he is examining how the dog eats. She is gulping down the food, not taking the time to chew and taste the food and kibble that she is eating. He examines her ferociously chomping down on her food, knowing that “all the dog does is ingest a substance for the sole purpose of loading up the gastrointestinal tract,” then compares it to his own current experiences saying “ the same joyless thing that I do.” David Wong Louie wishes that he was able to tell the dog to slow down, eat, enjoy the kibble and taste it for all its worth, “chew.”
Ultimately in “Eat Memory,” Louie’s candid and introspective narrative offers an emotional insight into the transformative power of illness and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
After diving into “Eat, Memory” by David Wong, I feel it hits hard. The way David lays bare his struggle with cancer and how it messed with his eating, man, it’s heavy.
That part about watching his dog eat, just inhaling food without really tasting it…It’s like a metaphor for how disconnected he feels from something so basic yet so significant.
And those memories he recalls, each tied to a specific dish or meal, they’re like little time capsules of his life. It made me reflect on my own memories and how much food is woven into our experiences.
But then, there’s this sadness when he talks about losing the pleasure of eating, not being able to crave or enjoy food like before. It’s like a piece of him is missing.
Yet, Wong’s resilience shines through. He finds a way to adapt, to redefine what brings him joy and meaning beyond the taste of food. It’s a powerful reminder of human strength in the face of adversity.
23 responses to “Week 3 Reading Response”
“With my G-tube, I did not eat— I fed the tube.”
In Eat Memory, Louie depicts his loss of the ability to eat and having to obtain food from a formula and tube through his stomach. The way he says “fed the tube” rather than “ate” or “ate through the tube” effectively depicts the artificialness of feeding himself and the sadness of no longer being able to enjoy food. I thought about how he used the words eat vs. feed to describe his experience. Feeding means to give food but eating means to ingest, taste, swallow, and nourish through means of the mouth. Through the juxtaposition of these two words, the reader can feel the pain and exhaustion of feeding for survival compared to eating for pleasure. The words “G-tube,” “formula,” and “feed” show how unnatural and dehumanizing the process of having cancer and going through treatments is. He discusses this right before describing his experience with Dr. L and another ENT. I feel like this could have been done to show further the dehumanizing nature of cancer through the doctors and hospitals and how they are often deadpan and emotionless in a hospital that is all gray and white. The writer effectively creates two worlds: one where he can eat good food and nourish himself and another where he has to feed a tube and be in a hospital with doctors being condescending towards him.
“The Fourth State of Matter”
This reading combined three stories into Jo Ann’s life: her dissolving marriage, her dying dog, and the events at work. She crafted them together to comment on the power of grief and loss. Her marriage she doesn’t know what to do with. She speaks about it in a way that is both acknowledging and denying the situation. She does this too with her collie. The dog is nearing its death but she continues to care for it and keep it alive. She does this again after the shooting. Where she sees the events and knows that they are true but refuses to believe them. She clutches onto what she wants to be true. In this, Jo Ann herself lives in the fourth state of matter. She is not in full denial, she has not accepted things, and she will not move on. The circular nature of the story highlights this. She cares for the dog, deals with her husband, and goes to work over and over again only to be disrupted by the shooting. The final line referring to the insect trapped in amber creates the final connection between her life and the stasis of the fourth state of matter.
“What’s more base than sustenance delivered directly to the stomach, like gavage to geese? I babbled to my wife about bodily integrity, how mine was, after these many years, unmarred, unpierced, un-broken-boned. Never mind the human condition. You are a body, first and last.”
In Eat, Memory, David Wong Louie makes sense of losing the ability to consume food, grappling with the brutality of throat cancer. My heart panged as Wong Louie lost the ability to talk, to even scream, yet he articulated the pain of this journey and transition so beautifully in writing. This piece made me ruminate on things that make us human and connected, and not just animals. I have been paying special attention to openings and endings, and I found this piece had interesting ones. The work ends with Wong Louie watching his dog eat, the animalistic hunger. There is almost a yearning to eat as the dog does, but Wong Louie misses the full sensations of eating. Breathing, sniffing, chewing. The attention of detail inspired me Wong Louie put in this piece— in reflecting on memory, you can almost remember such minute details of something that is gone and you can’t have anymore; for example, the loss of a person, or for Wong Louie, the act of eating. I loved the specific detail of eating, and how he acted for occasions— eating as an intimacy. This intimacy created such a human piece. The quote above stood out to me due to trying to remove the human aspect and the association between animals and humans and eating that the ending left you with. The comparison to geese, the body over the human condition. But this piece shows how something so manual can really be much deeper, an intimate ritual like described in the dinners Wong Louie would have with his wife. Eating wasn’t just something to keep you alive like an animal. This piece inspired me to look deeper at something so simple, and to look into the human experience, and what small things inspire me. Making a whole emotional journey and arc through something simple is really a creative feat, and inspiring.
HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA: A REMEMBERANCE – KIESE LAYMON
– Have encountered the concept of living versus surviving versus slowly dying, etc. before, but it always sticks with me.
– Meanings/understandings of belief & knowing – he sort of defines his own “knowing” somewhere on the 12th page as ‘what he needs to tell himself.’
– Seeing and being seen
– Freedom vs. survival
– The refrain of “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”
– The gravity of shame/guilt
– Understanding the people in our life to be complete in and of themselves, with their own distinct realities
– Not being able to make people feel how they made you feel (& sometimes, trying to anyway)
– In the world of this essay, at least, sometimes the reasons for wanting to end your own life can be very similar to the reasons for wanting to end someone else’s life, which had never consciously crossed my mind
– Resisting the urge to separate ourselves from “bad” people
– THE BRAVERY OF REMEMBERING
EAT, MEMORY: A LIFE WITHOUT FOOD – DAVID WONG LOUIE
– A reminder of how what’s important & the way we experience the world – (through our senses and far beyond) can vary so drastically between people
– The word “OUR” – have started circling it in our readings – in this reading was struck by the intimacy of a shared favorite (p. 40)
– What is spiritual/divine to different people
– The difference in how we deal with/understand our health declining as formerly healthy people vs. chronically ill people
– How apparently smoothly he adapted to a complete change of life made for him by necessity – I like to delude myself into feeling like I have some measure of control in life, despite that being not quite the case, so the idea of not being able to choose is panic-inducing – but, I suppose, choosing how we deal with something can lull us back into our sense of agency and control.
– “I can’t relate to that kind of beauty anymore.”
THE FOURTH STATE OF MATTER – JO ANN BEARD
– Struck by how misdirected I was by the beginning of the essay
– The very real dog as a metaphor/point of comparison throughout the essay
– What we are able to cope with/adapt to/get used to – how we form our routines & how we cling to them – why, scientifically, do we do that?
– “The face of love”
– The baby squirrel – why are things so sad when they end at the beginning, and does everyone feel this way, at least instinctually (if not intellectually,) or does it vary
– Everything in this story felt like a diversion but I suppose life often also feels the same way
– Happiness versus enjoyment
– Collateral – losses we don’t account for
– Definitions of/thresholds for suffering
– The use of hindsight in the present tense
– The bargains we make & how they are so human but often make us feel or seem inhuman
– To our dogs, we are always children
– How we remember & rewrite the past, usually so we can cope with our realities
– The line between selfishness and selflessness, if there is one
– The things we do to feel in control, the things we do to hold on
There were two lines that stuck with me from How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Other in America. The first one was on page 11, where he says, “I’m a waste of writing’s time”. I thought that was a unique way of expressing this thought. He is trying to say that he feels like he is wasting his time writing stories and poems that have little meaning and feel empty, just like he feels empty. Changing the line and saying that he is wasting writing’s time adds to the emptiness and burden that he feels.
I also loved the title of this piece. It really draws you into the story and the ending of the story has the same line as the title. I was thinking a lot about what the title means. I’m wondering if it is about losing a little bit of hope in the nation?
“He pictures himself holding the gun with both hands, arms straight out and steady; Clint Eastwood, only smarter.” – Jo Ann Beard in “The Fourth State of Matter”
Honestly, this piece really impressed me. The writing was very matter-of-factly and I expected this to be a piece about the boredom of life or her dying collie. I just didn’t expect how this story would end. While reading about the shooting I had to think about our last class discussion when we talked about Sloan’s “The Green Room” and why she included her father’s POV. How could she know what he felt? Did she just want her fantasy to be true? I felt the same way when Beard included the shooter’s POV. I guess it is a natural thing to find reason in everything we do, especially the things we simply can’t understand. Beard including the shooter’s POV feels like her way of coping with trauma, included for her benefit, not the reader’s benefit. It’s like filling in the blanks. I really enjoyed that and although that is a break with non-fiction since she can’t know about this it is the closest you can get.
Furthermore, she seemed to link her sick/old collie to incidents of death or loss. She always refers back to the dog, i.e. after her husband calls. I wonder though, why doesn’t her dog have a name in the story? Is the dog representative for Chris? There are other dogs in the story and it is only hers that is not referred to by a name. I wonder what you make of this.
The Fourth State of Matter stood out to me within the readings because it made me think about something that I feel like applied to The Green Room as well, and that is the author’s ability to write about a traumatic event, while at the same time being able to write about other themes that are unrelated, and allow them to have the same level of significance, if not more, within a piece. After reading Beard’s essay you may be inclined to say that the main event was a shooting, but it felt to me like the piece was more about loneliness, human connection, and sadness. Her dog, the collie, who she is unable to put down I think shows her unwillingness to move on in life not only with her dog but also coming to terms with her husband leaving her. There are certain moments that show her still holding on to him. On page 7 she says “i need to call him back because he’s suffering.” even though she acknowledges the ridiculousness of it by previously stating that he needs reassurance so that he can have fun on his bike ride. Three quarters of this piece is not spent focusing on the shooting, but rather her day to day life and routine of taking care of her dog, going to work, dealing with her ex, and I think that shows what the real focus of her story is.
Aya
“Eat, Memory.”
Many things stood out in this reading such as:
– The simple thing of eating that we take for granted. The way the authors journey went from simple eating to the awareness of what that entails. How grateful and conscious we have to be how we treat our bodies.
– ” Previous patients, the nurses said, had quit treatment midway and taken their cancers home.” this thought came to my mind as what is offered as a treatment is almost a disease in itself.
-“Dr. L seemed gleeful: he was “very excited” about my tumer”. I judged him as almost a sadistic accomplishment.
-“I settled on Fibersource HN, 300 calories and 13.5 grams of protein, a product of Nestle, the same company that gives the world Gerber baby food, Haagen Dazs, Kit Kat bars and Purina Dog Chow.” I find this almost like a horror story the same companies that are supplying the unhealthy living products to babies, adults and our pet friends are also supplying us with remedies for these cancers, its as almost they create the cancer and then offer more products to make more money out of our ignorance and suffering.
“When Dr. H discussed my tumor with another oncologist, I overheard him comparing its size to a plum. My first thought: What kind of plum? Italian, Santa Rosa, Greengage?”
The start of the essay “Eat, Memory” describes in great detail the author’s love of food, talking about the meals he would have during different times of the day, as well as his general and very specific preferences for meals and snacks. It is clear that Louie has vast knowledge on different types of foods, and is will take any opportunity he can to put that knowledge to use. Additionally, it is shown from my chosen passage that food is something that is always on his mind. When the doctor compares his tumor’s size to a plum, he starts wondering what specific type of plum the doctor could possibly be referring to, and lists several examples that I have never heard of. This very evident passion that Louie has for food is what made his ordeal all the more tragic and frustrating.
“Seeing food now doesn’t make me hungry; neither does reading about it or thinking about it. Drop a steak in front of me and what am I going to do? Will my mouth water or my blood pressure rises, my pleasure centers spark in my brain? None of this happens, because it can’t.”
In Louie’s “Eat, Memory,” this quote forced me to consider life and the simple things I take for granted. Taste and food itself are things that I appreciate but they seem like a normal part of life. Being confronted by the loss of food forces you to reconsider your own experience with it. Louie’s thoughts on food, the detail he provides, and then this quote where he denies hunger is striking. By saying “because it can’t” Louie accurately portrays his struggle, and you can feel the years of lost food. It’s a relatable feeling too, even if the specific experience is not relatable. How often do we tell ourselves we don’t want something simply because we know that we cannot want something?
If you tell yourself that over and over again, if you deny yourself, it over and over again, then eventually maybe you will believe it and it might get easier. Even then, sometimes thoughts are inevitable and Louie portrays this longing and acceptance in all its complexities.
“Never mind the human condition. You are a body, first and last”
I also love food, I think I’m always hungry so this piece felt really impactful. It’s terrifying that one thing can derail our bodies and we are left to deal with the fallout forever in order to survive. Wong Louie is able to convey such a specific feeling of acceptance and persistence. The will to survive is so strong that we will sacrifice so much integral to what our lives were like before. The way that he talks about his relationship with his wife feels so genuine and reminds the reader of why he has made this choice to live without food. There is so much emotion is the catastrophic dinner scene towards the end of the scene where you feel as though you are there and the way that he tells his story allows you to predict the doom and discomfort before it has come. It’s both hopeless and hopeful, reminding the reader to appreciate food every moment that we can.
Eat, Memory
A Life Without Food by David Wong Louie
The main character had such an affinity for food which is clear by his vivid descriptions of the food he would eat and the traditional dinners out with his family. Now the progression of his cancer has taken away his ability to taste, smell, speak, and eat. The part that stood out to me the most was his comparison of him and his dog, “ All the dog does is ingest a substance for the sole purpose of loading up the gastrointestinal tract: the same joyless thing that I do. Breathe, I would tell her, if I could. Sniff. Relish the chicken-and-liver recipe. Chew.” These final sentences emphasize how nonhuman his procedure has caused him to feel. He is more like a dog than human. He can no longer fuel his body with the joys he used to have from food. Food only serves as a mode of replenishing his body with the nutrients it needs, nothing more nothing less. It’s instinctual. Although, he is alive and does what is needed to sustain himself, a mindset his mother taught him, his quality of life has severely diminished. Leading to a mental battle of contemplating at what cost?
“I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me. When he looks over at me, it’s with an expression I’ve seen before. It’s the way he looks at the dog on the blanket.”
The Fourth State of Matter, like other pieces we’ve read of Jo Ann Beard’s, is an enormously successful work. What she manages to portray is not just a divorce and not just a horrific shooting, but rather a portrait of a woman who happens to survive both of those things. I love the matter-of-fact way that Beard tells the story as well as the thread of the border collie that follows her through the piece. I wasn’t exactly how to interpret the dog/blanket/laundry phenomenon — a representation of the cyclical nature of life? A reflection of a woman caring for everyone but herself? Or, as the husband sees her: a pitiful being. Regardless of what exactly it means, the dogs in The Fourth State of Matter are stabilizing forces for Beard as she loses everything she loves. She sleeps with them around her, holds them when the worst has happened, and stores her love for them in the stars.
” With the G-tube, I did not eat — I fed the tube. My mind did not equate the formula with food, as other patients do — how could I confuse the two?”
This essay was heartwrenching, especially reading how an action, that many of us usually do in our lives is something that was taken away from Louie. Viewing food as a memory and a form of enjoyment, and recalling those specific tastes in detail to then transitioning to a life with cancer and only experiencing food in the form of a liquid and not recalling the taste in detail highlighted the contrast between life before cancer and life during cancer. I could sense the excitement and joy when Louie was recalling all those foods he had eaten before his cancer progressed. It felt like he had a bit of hope left and was longing for those tastes and waited for hours for his cancer to be cured. However, as we read along through the essay we can see how his hope diminishes. As a reader, I sensed how he lost hope when describing his treatment process and how he couldn’t taste foods anymore after getting the G tube.
“Eat, Memory: a life without food”
By David Wong Louie
“People dine. We eat consciously, looking, tasting, smelling, gauging texture and temperature. We share. We talk. My wife and I seemed to talk differently when there was food between us. We loved restaurants, loved to go out and indulge in the rituals of a shared meal: settling in at our table, scanning the room, dissecting the menu, faking our knowledge of wine.”
This passage in “Eat, Memory” stood out to me because of the description Louie gives of such a mundane act. Most of us eat three meals a day, and we dine out on occasion. These things we do not think of as an “act,” a “scene,” instead they are just part of life. When Louie lost his ability to eat and dine out, he was able to capture the joy that comes from eating in a way that would otherwise go unnoticed. He does this by drawing attention to every single step of dining-out, from sitting at the table to receiving the food. Throughout the essay he captures the essence of eating, and why we, as a people, derive joy from it. I particularly enjoy this example because of the stylistic choice he makes in sentence length, starting with shorter sentences that seem to pass by quickly, to ending with a longer one, reminding me of eating slowly versus savoring each bite. I waitress in the summers, so I constantly see couples dining and enjoying each other’s company; however, I had not thought of eating in this way until reading this essay. Louie forces the reader to slow down, examine the parts of their life they may find mundane, and bring meaning to them.
“You have control over this” he explains in his professor voice “You can decide how long she suffers.”
This makes my heart pound. Absolutely not, I cannot do it. And then I weaken and say what I really want: for her to go to sleep and not wake up, just slip out of her skin and into another world.
“Exactly” he says
I think this part is interesting for two reasons. Firstly it shows how hard it is for her to accept the coming loss of her dog yet she knows that it’s time for the dog to die but she just can not make the decision herself. Grief and loss are a large part of this story, as well as the control over those things. The grief of her dog, her husband, her coworker/friends, and the uncontrollable part of that loss. Yet for the dog, there is some control for her, some time she gets to spend before she has to really feel that grief.
Also the end: “‘exactly’ he says”, is the exact same line as the end of the story and I wonder if it is in reference to this moment and their decision of loss and grief and the control we have over it. I do not have a full thought on this yet but I wonder what the connection/meaning could be.
The Fourth State of Matter by Jo Ann Beard is a story about grief. It takes three forms in the essay: her dog’s declining health, her relationship with her husband falling apart, and the tragedy at her job. I really enjoyed this reading. Beard does a great job of connecting elements throughout the story, effective metaphors, and foreshadowing. For example, the way she ties in facts or observations about space since the job she had at that time focused on space psychics. One quote that stood out to me was at the end. “I imagine it as a place of stillness, where the particles of dust stop spinning and hang motionless in deep space” I love how she connects a description of space to the amber necklace Chris gave her. This expresses how she feels when she’s in shock right after his death. Also, I think that the title is important. The fourth state of matter is plasma, it seems like the title refers to both what they’re studying and also blood. ‘Plasma is blood’ like Beard writes, so I think the title is referencing the violence that happens in the story.
My entire life, especially as a fat, disabled woman, I have been taught to put my own self aside. As a student and student leader, I’ve been taught to leave space for others, to lift up others, to learn from others, to sympathize with others, and to empathize with others. That said, in a creative writing class, I think we can give ourselves permission to think of ourselves as we learn to share our own stories while studying the writing styles of others.
I found it difficult to read “Eat, Memory” without projecting myself onto the author’s story. I share his passion for food and for dining. He said, “I can tell you that eating nice food and drinking good wine with my wife was the best thing ever.” I can say that this sentiment is true. The most enjoyable moments of life are spent putting a bite of delicious food in your mouth after a glass of Champagne or red wine while sitting across from a person or people that you love and admire. Singing a lead role in a musical is a close second.
Wong Louie’s story resonated with me, especially the part when he was told to choose between his voice and his ability to swallow. What really got me was this line, “If it had been up to me, I would have chosen the same. Swallowing, every time. I imagined the first thing I would eat — hot ramen noodles searing my throat on their way down.”
This reminds me of the choice fat people have to make when their doctors are pushing gastric bypass weight loss surgery. Gastric bypass is a risky medical procedure that results in a bypass of 99% of a person’s stomach. Complications are so prevalent that hospitals created an acronym, GBGB, gastric bypass gone bad. Every person I know who has had the surgery is unable to eat more than one or two bites of food, a few times a day.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a message asking if I had considered the surgery, telling me how great her life bas been since recently getting it herself. I asked her if she could eat. She said yes, but only a few bites here or there. I told her that I did not consider that any way to live and that my life was already great. While some may argue that not being able to eat is a small price to pay for a thin body, I radically oppose this notion. Giving up the ability to eat is no small price to pay. In fact, every other person I know that has had the surgery regrets it and would instantly trade their thinner body for the ability to eat. Imagine sitting at a table full of Thanksgiving dinner, taking one bite, and then watching your family eat, for the rest of your life.
Wong Louis does such an incredible job describing his experience losing the ability to eat, and to me, it just illustrates how barbaric it is to expect fat people to make this choice.
Another negative to gastric bypass, besides death and the loss of the ability to eat, is the loss of the ability to absorb nutrition. The part of the intestine which absorbs vitamins and minerals is bypassed, and in order to stay alive, those who have this surgery must purchase and take expensive vitamins and supplements for the rest of their lives. Other complications include, but are not limited to pain, infection, tearing, bleeding, nausea, bloating, weakness, sweating, fainting, diarrhea, gallstones, hernias, ulcers, blood clots, and malnutrition leading to osteoporosis and anemia. Furthermore, most people who have the surgery gain the weight back.
The narrative is that giving up eating, death, and these horrible side effects are better for you than being fat. The message is that being fat is something to avoid at all costs.
I know this story is about David Wong Louie’s experience with cancer, and it’s not about me or fat people. It’s about eating, and how it’s the best, and what losing it is like, which is a universal experience, and that is what this reading made me think about.
Eat, Memory
– A life without food
I liked how the author used sensory words to appreciate food and relive memories. Specifically, the following drew my attention, “People dine. We eat consciously, looking, tasting, smelling, gauging texture and temperature. We share. We talk. My wife and I seemed to talk differently when there was food between us. We loved restaurants, loved to go out and indulge in the rituals of a shared meal: settling in at our table, scanning the room, dissecting the menu, faking our knowledge of wine. After our orders arrived, we dug in, tasted each other’s dishes, critiqued the kitchen’s hits and misses. For hours we sipped and chewed.” The interesting choice of sensory words like “tasting”, “smelling” and “gauging”, the simple and short sentences help create that impact. It helps create a yearning for the sense of taste among readers just as it depicts the author’s longing. The repetition of the verb “loved” in the past tense, further establishes the yearning making it a moment and memory in the past that cannot be relived again. This intentional impact hooked me as a reader.
Additionally, using the dog as an elongated metaphor establishes how something as simple as eating, which we take for granted, is a big part of why we are human. Being able to enjoy and savor our meal is a big part of feeling alive. With that comparison, the author left a lingering feeling of yearning and a sense of gratitude. It is interesting how the author builds compassion among readers through these little choices of wording, sentences, and even literary devices.
“I drop the gun to my chest. I’m so sad and I can’t really see a way out of what I’m feeling but I’m leaning on memory for help.”
This sentence I think really encapsulates the parts of this piece that hit me the most. The way the author portrays his struggle with mental health, simplifying such dark, overwhelming, and complicated emotions into “i’m so sad”–especially in a moment so gut wrenching as attempting suicide. This sort of matter of fact writing style perpetuates the piece and makes it a fascinating read, since it allows for the reader to make their own conclusions and insert their own emotions onto the writing; personally I think this makes it a very powerful story. Lastly, the “I’m leaning on memory for help” segment really hit me as a unique but extremely successful way to depict trying to find happiness in a moment outside of the present. I think the simplified language also works very well here, since the imagery is so well crafted that we can visualize exactly what coping mechanism the author used; but without taking away from the atmosphere of trudging and suffering through the swamp of life.
In “The Fourth State of Matter”, Jo Ann Beard tells a devastating story through mundane, everyday experiences. A large portion of the essay is focused on her day-to-day life and the people in it. We as the reader get used to a certain rhythm, which is suddenly interrupted when Beard reveals what is going on in Gang Lu’s mind, and the contents of his letter to his sister. She divides not only the essay but her life into two parts, referring to the day of the shooting as “the last day of the first part of (her) life” (Beard, 11). Beard describes the shooting, which she did not witness herself, in a matter-of-fact manner using simple language and short sentences. She then recounts her own reaction to the shooting. Even in this emotionally charged section of the essay, she includes minor details, like how she notices her husband is “wearing a shirt (she’s) never seen before” (Beard, 16). The way Beard chose to write this story makes it easy for the reader to step into her shoes and experience the tragedy through her.
In David Wong Louie’s “Eat Memory,” he reflects on his journey through cancer treatment and the profound impact it has had on his life, specifically his relationship with food. David Wong Louie’s narrative is hard hitting and raw, delving into both the emotional toll of battling a severe illness such as cancer.
Throughout his narrative, he discusses how much he used to love food and how much this inability to truly eat and enjoy something he used to love has affected him. Something that we take for granted every single day, the ability to enjoy food, is something that he has lost. In losing that ability, he has lost a piece of himself. Towards the end of his essay, he writes, “Five years without a morsel of food passing between my lips has made me a stranger. Seeing food now doesn’t make me hungry; neither does reading about it or thinking about it.” Loving and enjoying food was part of his identity, part of who he was. He recalls the meals he used to eat with loved ones. He recalls the memories that go along with meals as well as the rituals of dinner and other meals. He lost that ability to love and even consume food and everything that comes with, and therefore he lost a piece of himself.
This essay was not a story that was begging for pity. Instead, I interpreted it as a sign and a reminder to appreciate the little things in life that we take for granted every day, because you truly won’t realize their importance until they’re gone. This message is highlighted at the end of his essay when he is examining how the dog eats. She is gulping down the food, not taking the time to chew and taste the food and kibble that she is eating. He examines her ferociously chomping down on her food, knowing that “all the dog does is ingest a substance for the sole purpose of loading up the gastrointestinal tract,” then compares it to his own current experiences saying “ the same joyless thing that I do.” David Wong Louie wishes that he was able to tell the dog to slow down, eat, enjoy the kibble and taste it for all its worth, “chew.”
Ultimately in “Eat Memory,” Louie’s candid and introspective narrative offers an emotional insight into the transformative power of illness and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
After diving into “Eat, Memory” by David Wong, I feel it hits hard. The way David lays bare his struggle with cancer and how it messed with his eating, man, it’s heavy.
That part about watching his dog eat, just inhaling food without really tasting it…It’s like a metaphor for how disconnected he feels from something so basic yet so significant.
And those memories he recalls, each tied to a specific dish or meal, they’re like little time capsules of his life. It made me reflect on my own memories and how much food is woven into our experiences.
But then, there’s this sadness when he talks about losing the pleasure of eating, not being able to crave or enjoy food like before. It’s like a piece of him is missing.
Yet, Wong’s resilience shines through. He finds a way to adapt, to redefine what brings him joy and meaning beyond the taste of food. It’s a powerful reminder of human strength in the face of adversity.