And so, bite by bite, the olive enters into my body and soul. Each bite brings with it a recurring wave of sensation and charm.
No. We will not dispute with the brilliant mind that declared life a tragedy to those who feel. We will let that stand. However, there are parts of the tragedy that are not tragic. There are parts that admit of a turning aside.
As the years pass, one after another, I shall continue to eat. And as I eat I shall have my quiet, my brief period of aberration.
This is the art of Eating.
I have acquired it by means of self-examination, analyzing—analyzing—analyzing. Truly my genius is analytical. And it enables me to endure—if also to feel bitterly—the heavy, heavy weight of life.
What a worm of misery I should be were it not for these bursts of philosophy, these turnings aside!
If it please the Devil, one day I may have Happiness. That will be all-sufficient. I shall then analyze no more. I shall be a different being.
But meanwhile I shall eat.
When the last of the olive vanishes into the stomach, when it is there reduced to animated chyme, when I play with the olive-seed in my fingers, when I lean back in my chair and straighten out my spinal column,—oh, then do you not envy me, you fine, brave world, who are not a philosopher, who have not discovered the art of the small things, who have not conscious chyme in your stomach, who have not acquired the art of Good Eating!