STEPHEN LYLE

Those words from Handel's Messiah, as that bad boy arrives for the first time. The following assumes it was his only planned stopover.

Our own eventual demise is most pleasantly foreshadowed in the natural course of all food, as it dances its way towards and then through our gut.  It’s the “longeurs” -  the particular biological arc each incarnation takes towards its end - that matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his most sapient days, designated every Fall a fall forward. Good cheese is the proof of this proposition. Thank God there is always some luck involved, so if the cake once baked, is a little flat - say OK! Amor Fati! The realm of possibility must include failure for the same reason that, generally speaking, bad meals lead to better ones. Patience, perseverance – it’s true - good wine needs time! This commonplace needs to be shouted afresh every morning! This affirmation is the salve for what Nietzsche claimed as the soul’s ultimate agony, namely our realization that everything we know is history -  the fact that we are eternally late to the party. So even if you can sort of smell your own death, as time unwinds itself inside a fine gorgonzola, admit that it is better than okay that yes, though there is only one way out of here, we seem to be nonetheless headed in the right direction…maybe it's really eat drink and die!