Hungry

“The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age.”

By Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist”, which was initially published in monthly installments from February 1837 to April 1839.

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Dear Alex,

To be so hungry, “voracious and wild” as this boy strains for another bowl of oatmeal, is how the New Year in its first month has already consumed some among us.

A year ago I started writing here for my first time. I was hungry for words and the Word in infinite cuts has tranquilized me at times, agitated me some more to no end.

Hunger, this restlessness of suckling nothing but sucking fingers still, makes bowls shine without the need for washing, turns knolls into rolls of traffic and plastic, flips lifelong dream to live streaming on couch past midnight. There are not enough words in our palatial appetite to smolder the craving for more, bolder and over.

But why? For whom and what does this hunger serve? And from and to where is it coming? Entreat you it shall to gnaw on your ribs, aerate your desiccated hollowness. Specters and spectators, we are addicts in an epidemic more contagious than the coronavirus. In hunger we trust.

I have consumed this harrowing carcass of a passage in “Oliver Twist” since I first uncovered it more than a decade aged. Its stark details are resorbed in my insomnia from nightfall through daybreak. I toss and hiss on mattress, stacking and toppling ego and angst.

Last night during a squabble in the glare of shadow, my daughter stared at me and asked: How about you? What are you doing to help the poor?

My hunger to vilify and nullify she seized.

January in its abundance of novelty is almost spent among hungry stalkers hawking reasons to hoard hunger. Make me a mean sandwich to share.

Yours, Kate