Carrying a Heavy Sack Across the Desert
Back pain is a bitch. So is getting old. Life kicks you in the nuts as much as it shines an errant light on you, reminding you of your value. It’s the little things. The big things are like Internet headlines built to make you crater. Little things hurt like stepping on a thumbtack, but they also bring us love like a puppy after you’ve been outside for only two seconds. Life is a brindled gnu.
The flavor of coffee is like a bowl of turds to me. I’ve been challenged on this so many times in my life that I’ve hoped that human combustion was real. I just don’t like it. And I don’t like garlic. Or capers. They all suck. To me, coffee is the smell of someone’s breath when all they’ve had is coffee, and it’s 2:07 pm on a Wednesday. Rank.
If my personality had a toggle switch, the two sides would say:
a little under medium
a little over medium
Flatline Johnson.
If I were carrying a heavy sack across the desert, I would probably lay it down somewhere and try to rest. I am 55 now, and I don’t have the physical fortitude that I used to. I’m someone’s aging dad who can pass for 42, with a body that feels like 61. Some mornings, I wake up feeling like a million bucks. Other mornings, I consult my Health chat to make sure I’m not dying. We are all dying.
Ear hair is insane as you get older. You go to bed one night, noticing nothing. You wake up the next morning, and there is a three-inch hair coming out of your ear. It’s annoying, but also pretty interesting. Weird things are interesting, as well as weird people. Vanilla is vanilla. Rainbow sherbet may be made of chemicals, but it’s very interesting. I need more rainbow sherbet in my life, I think.
I get so bored with eggs. They are like reading a book you have to finish for school in tenth grade. No. I don’t want to. Then you do. I find they taste exactly the same with spinach and tomatoes in them. They always taste the same. The smell is starting to bother me. Oatmeal, on the other hand, is an outlier. I was talking to someone the other day who said that they couldn’t eat oatmeal because of the texture. That’s why I like it so much. And grits. And Cream of Wheat. It’s like creating a food that tastes like how a cat’s tongue feels on your ankle.
I wonder if I would have liked almond butter when I was younger. Probably not. Everything I ate had extra sugar. It probably destroyed my palate. But also, if there was a jar of Skippy next to me right now, and a spoon, I would jam a heaping spoonful into my mouth and call it an afternoon.
Handlebar mustaches are ludicrous unless you work as a bartender in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They are also cool if you are Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York. Shaving is an absurd pastime. The first time a friend cracked a fake egg on my head, I was amazed at how accurate it was. Kids do a lot of cool shit when they are younger. My gallery manager once told me she got an unsolicited high-five on the Lower East Side on the way to work. I can’t think of something much better.
Maybe I would carry a heavy sack across the desert after all if it were filled with bite-sized Mounds bars and sweet tea from a road-stop deli on the way through Georgia.
© Jonathan Greene, July 9, 2026.
