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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I think it was raze here who dreamed about me dismissing the concept of lunch. Sometimes dreams mirror life: backwards. Lunch is one of my favourite concepts! I need the energy boost as well as the break. At work, I enjoy talking to C. if she's eating with me, or reading, if she isn't. It's something to look forward to. Even if I'm at home and being lazy, the thought of having food to make spurs me into a sense of purpose. Other people, though, aren't so lunch-enthused.
A poetry-reading acquaintance sent me an article he wrote about renouncing lunch. He's culturally Muslim and grew up not eating lunch for a month each year. During Ramadan you're not supposed to eat between sunrise and sunset; in northern climates it's sometimes modified to more equatorial times, like 8 AM and 6 PM, but I'm not the expert on this. Anyway. No lunch. As an adult (50-something?) he decided to start fasting again - not bunches of time at once, but Ramadan-style. He doesn't eat or drink in the middle of the day, and he's found he's healthier and more focused that way.
The more surprising lunch-avoider was my brother. He loves eating, and eats a lot. He'll order the breakfast with bacon, ham AND sausages; with pancakes AND toast; with eggs, potatoes, and fruit slices. All that at a time. When he got home from college - before he went to university in Nova Scotia - he'd peel and eat three large carrots as an afternoon snack, dipping them in a pool of French dressing, while munching on thick slices of bread with thick slabs of butter.
Lunch? So I thought. But he'd eat it when he came back from class at 5 PM. More recently, when he was home this August, between working at summer camp and studenting, I noticed he didn't always eat lunch. A couple of times I asked, "Oh, do you want to have lunch now?" Time 1 he'd had a late breakfast, he said; time 2 he just didn't feel like it. Lunch seems like something inessential to him - I don't think he'll ever stop eating it as a form of self-discipline, but the thing's at a take-it-or-leave it status.
So. Lunch. Bad? Good? Neither or either. The poet said so, and you can (usually) trust a poet: it's about what works for each person.
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