For some months, I’ve been telling myself that I need a better morning ritual.

A more thoughtful and meditative one that sets up the day properly.

One thing that means is: turning coffeemaking into a kind of far-eastern tea ceremony.

I feel pretty certain about that.

Then going on to live much of the ensuing day the same way.

I feel anxious sometimes for reasons like: There doesn’t seem to be any place in this town to buy a shot glass marked off in milliliter measurements; because in the ceremony the first cup needs to contain exactly 15 ml of keto-rich heavy cream.

So I even check the thrift store, unsuccessfully, and then I fret and write it down on the going-to-the-big-town list.

The anxiety is because I’m not immediately succeeding in living my life without anxiety.

Which is goddamn ridiculous.

Sometimes I am goddamn ridiculous.

***

Sometimes, I am a literal, verifiable and legitimate genius.

Winking with a toothgapped smile of pure honesty, I tell you sincerely that I know it can be very hard for anyone who isn’t me to see it, because I spend so much of my time down in the weeds, overthinking and boiling over noisily … ferociously experimenting in my fortress of solitude like a mad cartoon villain, or anti-hero, or just professor like the kind I once was out there in the world.

Or: spending too much of my libidinal bandwidth in spilling out dregs here, full of pics and links that, while often informative or entertaining, are actually tangential to the serious thrust of my thinking–thinking which only gets represented and symbolized by belletristic words once in a while, here, or elsewhere, or in real life.

Prologue aside, I’m going to tell you a (shaggy, raggedy) story about a very small moment of my genius, a moment that came after a period of many days. A week and more of mornings and afternoons in which I was intermittently manic about a certain small and specific thing.

About ten months ago, I got sick and tired of looking at my big flabby gut and decided to try to do something serious about it. Mainly and in brief, I accepted the Gospel according to the ketogenic low-carb diet, and its divine twin, Intermittent Fasting, eventually to the point of One Meal A Day, almost every day.

In the earliest days of my born-again conversion experience, the results were extremely gratifying and rewarding.

I lost an inch off my gut every month, down to the end of last year, six inches of it gone away for good.

***

That second part was supposed to be a long brilliant post.

It’s been sitting around in draft form for days.

Instead of finishing it, I am writing it down and letting it go.

That is the ceremonial thing to do, in this specific case.

***

Also I just realized that the coffee scale can measure in milliliters, so …

Right now I am fully embracing my inner Ridiculous Genius.