I had rashes often when I was a child. In the winter, where I lived, near the ocean, which was a desolate gray-green, the cold wind whipped the sand in circles, and I was forced to wear heavy woolen pants and sweaters. My body felt on fire. I was uncomfortable and itchy, the inside of my thighs were hot and sticky, and unsightly rashes, little red bumps, would spread on my inner thighs, around my neck, and on my chest. In the winter, the harsh wool of sweaters and pants plagued me. Even the thought of a heavy wool sweater or a pair of pants stiff to the touch could bring discomfort, and I'd start to feel warm, my forehead would become hot, I'd sweat and turn beet red. Now I try never to wear clothes that cause me to itch or that irritate my skin. I can barely stand to touch materials that could torment my flesh, like a hair shirt, which was worn voluntarily, to cause discomfort, and instead I search for fabric that's gentle, one hundred percent cotton, or a silk or cashmere, and whenever I choose something to wear, or when I'm in a store surrounded by clothes hanging on racks or decorously displayed on shelves, surrounded also by women and men, or just women, who want something new to cover their bodies, to make them feel differently about themselves, even for a moment, one that evaporates so quickly they will soon need to visit a store again and buy something else to wear, first I notice colors, then I touch fabric, twisting the material between my fingers, to test its gentleness, and sometimes I press it to my face, to see if it is soft enough. I also breathe in the material, hoping to like its smell, and, in doing so, use a sense with no sense, though with consequences and blind motivations, since the senses have no insight, but a smell triggers the recurrence of a past moment or a scene which dissolves as fast as mercury slides, like the vainglorious past, and with it comes the realization of its loss, and these are called sense memories.
Material is rarely soft enough, it's rare to find good cotton. There are many kinds of cloth, material that is made of natural fibers, like the four basic, earliest fibers-cotton, wool, silk, and linen-and material from artificial or synthetic matter, like nylon and rayon, and later polyester. Rayon was the first synthetic material, the generic term for manufactured textile fibers or yarn produced chemically from cellulose or with a cellulose base, and for threads, strands or fabric made of it. Cellulose is a substance constituting the chief part of the solid framework of plants, of cotton, linen, rayon, paper. In its pure form, it's a white amorphous mass. The chemistry of cellulose is quite complicated. My father understood it and told me about yarns, synthetic and natural, when I was little. During World War II, my father and his younger brother innovated synthetics, nylon threads, because cotton was scarce and required for the war effort, but historically cotton is associated with enslaved African men and women toiling in cotton fields on Southern plantations, though I wear it usually without recalling that, and, even in the winter, a heavy cotton feels good close to the skin, because I don't like being too warm, and good cotton, of a higher denier, is usually comfortable.
There could easily be a mishap when clipping an infant's tiny toenails, with their uncountable and inherent vulnerabilities that immature or unfinished adults still feel, but I forgot that the fantasy baby I supposedly bore was in the room. I had become absorbed in what I was doing, I was busy, and when I realized I had forgotten the imaginary baby, it had already crawled to an electrical socket, stuck a tiny, pink finger into it, and was severely shocked, its toenails burned, or it was killed, for which I was to blame. Sometimes no one is to blame, terrible things happen, accidents and illnesses, and no one is to blame, yet I always want to bring something to account, or someone, often myself. I'd like to blame my father for the disappearance of my brother, or my brother for the death of my father, I'd like to blame one friend's sickness on another, I blame the ocean, which I love, for its riptides that pull hapless swimmers out to its depths and swallow them, I blame a mountain for a friend's accidental death, but with silly blame, there is added futility. I can't do anything about riptides and incessant desire, so I usually try to make lunch last, though there is a limited quantity, and today I fail again, yet I always hope to invent new ways to make it last, but rarely do, except to choose not to eat it or to eat it an hour later, which is an option people with food disorders select. If they don't eat now, when they are supposed to, they can eat later, which prolongs the possibility of a satisfaction that escapes them, just as the head cook escapes satisfying the residents here. If I like the soup that comes in the thermos, or even if I don't, I pour it into a white china mug and sit before the fire, stir it, and then take a spoonful, attempting everything in a leisurely way, as if I weren't hungry and had all the time in the world, which is what there is, nothing but time, and as languorously as I spoon the soup and stir the fire, as quickly does the fire wane and the mug empty. No matter how measured I am, how I alternate or retard my actions, eventually the lunch is eaten, finished, and the fire, if I don't throw a log on it, burns out. Here is the death of lunch, I think, bemused, but nonetheless a subsequent apathy arrives, the dreariness of uncertainty, and the dread about what to do with myself, since now there's nothing to do but face the afternoon and wait for dinner, though I'm not hungry, only perplexed and unsatisfied.
The residents often remark, at dinner, that they hope to make their lunch last, though there is a limited quantity of it, because it's a long time until dinner, and like me they need to find ways to make it last. Some do, but I never do. My brother played a game with me, one of the few we had, including Monopoly, though I wasn't good at it, when I was seven, he eighteen, called: Who can eat ice cream the slowest? No matter how slowly I licked the vanilla ice as it melted over the side of the snow cone, how I juggled the sugar cone and walked fast, because we always competed walking back to the house I loved, he won, he would never let me win, though I was many years younger, and then he was triumphant. We would reach the front door to the house that was sold over my protests, but my brother was already long gone from it and us then, and he would still be eating his ice cream and enjoying his victory, and, strangely enough, though I was frustrated and had lost again, since he was bigger, I believed it was his right to win.