Sleepwalking and Eating Myself

Unsolicited advertising for cookies and sandwiches. Absurdly practical, cookies and sandwiches are the pinnacle of human efficiency and deliciousness. They fill your mouth with flavor even when you're in a rush to finish a job or complete a murder—you know, you can't leave bodies walking around half-eaten. But there's always time for a cookie break. Oh, and with that mouth-burning, boiling tea to go with it, the dry, crunchy sweet treat that simultaneously leaves you craving more and more but never truly satisfies. The inexplicably chemical flavor made especially for you, unlike those ridiculous organic foods—that comes from the earth, no preparation required.

But if that's the case, what argument do you have for sandwiches, smarty pants? You should think. Nutritional packets less akin to death than jelly and astronaut pills or fitness lunch boxes, things that take time, require cutlery, generate dishes—a sandwich you just grab from the fridge, heat in the microwave, and pop in your mouth. It's the ghost food that disappears as quickly as when you caught it. Yet it fills you up enough to keep you going, and depending on the sauce, it's terribly tasty. It can be both your sin of the day and your natural food. It can be your survival ration but also a candlelit dinner. Or that midnight meal you rummage through the fridge when you spend the night with your friend and you're bored gossiping, looking for more to put in your mouth to keep the time passing.

These two artificial foods are our memories, as practical and desirable as we are. No one turns down a cookie, let alone a sandwich. Both are part of the imaginary path to success, the resilience of a child who doesn't shy away from the fight, the tears of the heartbroken, the nameless pain that prevents you from cooking. Temporary, fleeting, comforting foods are a flame we need to keep burning to lift us from the emptiness in our stomachs or our minds, until we have none left and become food too.