Talk like you eat

So I'm reading this fabulous book, Eat, Pray, Love, that is totally life-changing. I've been reading it for a while as one of my for-pleasure-midnight-binges--one of those books that helps you when you're so tired but just cant sleep. I remember loving reading from the moment that reading skill clicked when I was in Kindergarten. I was reading some random book about a girl who grew green beans. That magical moment started it all. From then on, I was a reading-machine. Now, today, technology moves very fast. So fast that many in my generation cannot conceive of what life was like before technology. We do not read books to fall asleep. We stay up very late on our phones looking up random things, listening to ASMR to fall asleep. But I still remember the days of reading to fall asleep. 
I remember lying on my back with my little timer flashlight that would go off every three minutes, and when the batteries ran out, I remember reading in the dark. I remember howling in tears when that flashlight broke and my Daddy couldn't fix it. My parents always used to say to never read in the dark, "you'll ruin your eyes!" But I did it anyways, and paid the price with my eyesight, cursed forever to wear my amazingly beautiful glasses (My truest love). One time a friend asked me what I wished for when we were watching shooting stars.
"You know, I wish that someday, when I go to Heaven, that God lets me bring my glasses."
Oh yeah, them storybooks be bullshite! Ain't no way I'm going to heave without em! But I guess I've got forever to figure that out.
Anyhow! So I'm reading  Eat, Pray, Love, by the fabulous Elizabeth Gilbert, and now I am completely obsessed with Italian. The language. As she describes the words, each one is like a beautiful truffle. Now, I've been vegan for about a week now, so truffles are off my list, but if I can't get to them, you sure as heck can bet I'll be scarfing down Italian words to fill my life with sweet richness. We all need a little bit of that in our life, now don't we!
So she goes to Italy, her first stop on a year of self-revelation abroad, and here she divulges in passion--the passion of words and of food. Now that I can jive with! She delves deep into Italian phrases and cracks them open to pour into her life. So as I was reading today, I paused on one of her phrases, "Parla come magni"  "Say it like you eat." And I thought, what if we all talked the way we ate. Jesus, I would eat a ton of food! Such richness--I long to fill my entire life with this richness. Yet, with my poetry, I talk like rocks--inedible, mineral, coarse--salty. Sal-tay bay-bay! 
However, I long to eat very clean and very slow. The slow food movement, if you will. So far, This week I have eaten SO clean. I'm pretty proud of myself. No dairy, no eggs, no meat--excepting fish, which I know that mercury content... I've also been working out a lot lately, a big move for me. Working out is like fueling up to me. It is rough and animal, primal. If I talked like I exercise, I would move to be straight to the point, on it with every word, chaining phrases together like it was nobody's business. It'd be my business. 
And so, I believe on the menu of my dialect--my own communicative repertoire--We start out with a slow, clean thesis, a greeting, a welcoming, before busting into a richness of delicacy for a main course. Follow it up with something salty for a poetic middle, and a rough and tumble, to-the-point second course. I gotta have a palate cleanser, a smooth transition to the richness of a post-workout smoothie (My own version of Liz's gelato). The transition adds clarity and hi-lights the points made previously while acknowledging and thanking them before letting them fade away to make room for the silence that occurs between meals. Silence, my friends, goes a long way. 
Now, Where do we find silence in our writing? In one way, you could assume that it is omnipresent, considering you are reading within your mind. In another sense, it is nowhere, considering the constant stream of thoughts inside your mind--the words from the page, bouncing around, dancing together until the meaning shines through. But silence abounds within writing. There is silence between each word, between each syllable as you read. everyone reads at their own pace, adding pauses where the reader deems them needed (#deathoftheauthor). There are various sizes of silence--minute ones mentioned before, great ones like those at the end of a chapter. There is this beautiful silence once a point has finally been tied off like a knot, finally been found forever within word. This, followed by the gentle sway of the palate-cleansing transition.
So, "Parla come magni". It's much more complicated than you think. My thoughts are always tied up and twisted like a delightful spaghetti, twirled together on a fork, and always a heaping mouthful. But for me, reading my own writing leaves me satisfied. Do we really talk like we eat? Can we move to talk like we eat? 
I have this fantasy of a life where time is irrelevant--something like in Tuck Everlasting. In this life, I would talk more slowly, with more thought. Though I have to stop myself, would I really? In reality, I am a ravenous writer. I write like my dad eats, I write like the tenth child at a table with 12 people and limited food. And I think, if I had all the time in the world to write whatever, to think whatever, I would only write more. Literary obesity. And I would revel in it.
Wow, do I sound hungry? Ha! I promise that I'm not! Hungry for more words. I will always be hungry for words, for thought. What are you hungry for?