moral sliptitude
these are my confessions
may 8, 2024
today is a new moon and i had to wake up early to walk about 30 minutes to a well-known multinational fast food chain in order to catch a ride to my job in the countryside. in a european city that seems hell bent on keeping me hungry, i almost always eat at home. spanish and spanish assimilating folk that i know take coffee with milk for breakfast. that’s it- just coffee. oh, right, and milk. i’m not one to make cultural judgements but COFFEE IS NOT BREAKFAST. i’m sorry, it just isn’t. your body is not thanking you, but your crackbrain definitely is and that is usually a good enough reason for me to go on downing a few vermouths or fernet and cokes on a pretty empty stomach with friends at my favorite bars. sure, the drinks may come with tapas (SMALL, complimentary singular serving of food) but that is not dinner much in the same way as the milk in coffee does not constitute breakfast. my body can’t handle an empty stomach but alcohol curbs appetite, blurs mind body connection, and will sometimes cause me to throw it all up the next day so trust me when i say i’m REALLY NOT judging you. i poison myself in worse ways. i’m just more of a morning person.
speaking of poison, when faced with this most minor inconvenience of having to wake up earlier and walk 5x’s my normal distance for a ride, i lost myself. sure, i’ll go with the flow but i thought you know what, fuck it! i’m going to grab breakfast at this multinational fast food chain for having to walk 30 mins at 8 am to it. a lil crack to start my day could be nice. you breakfast coffee drinkers get it. i am pretty ~mindful~ (ugh) about what i put in my body first thing in the morning so this was me making an active decision toward hedonism— something the venusian ass part of myself thoroughly enjoys. i set off on my journey toward the university (because of course the only stand alone fast food chain in town is by the university) on this cold, misty morning. as i’m nearing the destination, i put the fast food chain into google maps to see exactly how to arrive when a message appears telling me that it doesn’t open until 10am. I never considered that a mcdonalds wouldn’t be open for breakfast. The one place (save burger king- shout out barajas airport…) that you can always expect to be there for you when you’re in a pinch. just arrived in a tourist trap with overpriced subpar food? yeah, i ate mcdonalds for breakfast in venice. stuck at a random airport at an ungodly hour? get breakfast or lunch food with a beer if you so choose (country dependent) at, say, 7am. a beautiful thing, if you don’t think too much about it.
the point i’m trying to make is how the hell is mcdonalds not opened for breakfast?! maybe google maps is wrong. it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. but i decide not to risk it because, like i said before, my body absolutely cannot handle an empty stomach. and before work, no less?? if i’ve been hungry just a little too long, all of the life begins to drain out of me fast. “hangry” be damned i am already somewhere beyond it. i forfeit the capacity to make even the simplest of decisions, like what the fuck i’m going to consume now if not the head of the next person who asks me a question like what i want to eat. i resemble one of those deflated air dancers you see outside of abandoned car dealerships. it’s pathetic. meanwhile children in the congo are eating soil with a smile to delay actual starvation. i suppose it’s so that i can have this iphone i used to check the map and be outraged at a fast food restaurant being closed until 10am…
eating the most important meal of the day at an establishment that serves fake food and benefits from genocide on a particularly “well-placed” new moon is not exactly how i want to start a lunar cycle. i, personally, am not one for ritual so someone else’s god must have been looking out for me today in my moment of weakness; my lil moral sliptitude as i like to call it, which is basically the opposite of moral fortitude. for transparency i must state that i am actually not interested in morality however i am aboard the train of aligning my values with the kinds of things i’d like to see more of: graceful pivots, good food, not funding genocide, freeing palestine… things like that.
that’s all for today.
🍉 🧿