Eating an orange for breakfast is always romantic. I had a toasted bun with honey on one side and jam on the other, and coffee, and then my oatmeal. I took my time and looked at the bare, clean apartment and the dull gold light on the walls. I listened to Up in Wolves; I had  awoke with it in my head, clear and musical (that lyric guitar melody). I made it to class on time, despite my leisurely morning.

Youth is a glaze of beauty and romance. Aging brings you in contact with reality, unglazed. This is good because reality is truthful and the beginning of love and the fear of God, but tragic because you feel disqualified from romance and beauty. Your experience of beauty & romance is partly extrinsic. I experience my sublime breakfast through an imagined spectator. If I am not beautiful, that spectator turns away, and I’m left with the bare facts of my existence: the actual foods I’m eating, what I am planning on doing today, what I am worth.