Tale from a Muffin

As I mentioned recently, I’ve begun reading Infinite Jest. There is a scene near the beginning (I am still in the beginning; I will still be in the beginning several hundred pages from now) where Hal the young tennis star is in an office with some administrators and his uncle (do I remember correctly?) for an admissions interview at a prospective school. The uncle is answering all the questions and Hal is sitting there mute. The administrators begin to question Hal’s academic standing and potential, and they want Hal to answer the questions. They ask the uncle to leave the room. At last we get a response from Hal, which is respectable and confident; we then, however, get the administrator’s perspective: Hal is flailing and convulsing and they have to restrain him.

This sort of perceptual divergence happens to me frequently, people responding to me as if I’ve done or said something other than I think I have done or said. In fact, it happened a few minutes ago when I went to the hospital café to retrieve a muffin (the kind you mix and bake). I usually get a bagel and sometimes coffee, but I decided to stray. The cashier went directly for a coffee cup, but I said, "Nope, just a muffin today." Then I said, "How are you today?" She replied, "Ohhhhhh, I see." I assume she thought I said that I was getting something new today. I just went with it. Smiled, nodded.

Another instance: The week Mark and I were going to Las Vegas, The Good Doctor I work for was going to Prague. Someone from the sleep lab came by my office and said something about what it would be like with the Doctor gone next week. I said, "Well, actually I’m going to Las Vegas next week, so I’ll be gone too." She replied, "Well, at least you’ll be able to get work done with him interrupting you. A little break." I like this woman, and I was planning on telling her I was going to Las Vegas, that I would be out the whole next week and wouldn’t see her. I still haven’t said anything else about the trip to her.

This is more proof that everything, absolutely everything, is rooted in illusion and people perceive only what they want, have conversations entirely by themselves, read their very own versions of books, watch their very own singular sit-coms. There are many more such occasions in the bank. It can’t be just me. In the past I've tried correcting matters on impact but with the same response. Besides, I find these exchanges satisfyingly peculiar and worthy of microscopic study.

By the way, that blueberry muffin (which apparently is the official muffin of Minnesota) was fantastic: warm, soft, and tasty. Will I have the requisite healthy shit later? Isn’t that what muffins do? More later on Illusion and The People.