By David Odyssey1
I am sick of being harried. Corporatist gaslighting suggests that I should rush out the door and grab something on the way, that I should be so busy that I forget to eat. There is no time. Among millennials looms a rather unattractive distrust of domesticity, a twee shame when it comes to the eating of three square meals and the proper making of a home. We can’t do anything, and we are ashamed of the things we aren’t doing well enough. Must everything be sipped out of a mason jar we found in a ditch?
And then there are the ones who make oatmeal. On these hot plates, ritual is not dead yet. The windows open, the coffee gurgles, the oats boil. You rouse to life as the dusty shreds ooze into golden goo. It takes as long as it needs to take. Besides some impossible hour of morning meditation, this is as pure a spiritual custom as any other.
This is breakfast made with care, and, based on the conversations I’ve had with fellow daily devotees, the way we personalize it speaks to how, in the quiet bloom of dawn, we show ourselves grace. Chia seeds, dark chocolate squares, raw turmeric, peanut butter, fruit compote: whatever the customization, this is yours, a private rapture before entering a surveilled world. Oatmeal is a single’s delight. No one has to know what you gave yourself.
Not that oatmeal can’t be shared. Moonstruck ends with the family around the table, hashing it out over Olympia Dukakis’s basic breakfast. “Yes, Mrs. Castorini,” Nicholas Cage growls, “I would love some oatmeal!” The heroes of Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Kiki’s Delivery Service recover from their travails over a bowl of porridge, served by an affectionate guide. Steaming and satiating, it is as emblematic of mother’s nourishment—rich as apple pie. Even the protein-fixated weightlifter, conscripted to a life of sad chicken cutlets and drip-drip whey anesthesia, finds a break from the slog in his morning slop.
That is, of course, under the proviso that we’re talking about rolled oats, or steel-cut. No one knows what either of these signifiers means, but suffice it to say: instant oats are an abomination. Here we encounter gruel in its cruelest incarnations. It’s what Neo and his fellow survivors eat upon the chilly Nebuchadnezzar, wearing wool smocks and secretly longing to return to the Matrix. It’s dehumanization in culinary form for the orphans of Oliver Twist and The Secret Garden, the daily ration for a Gulag inmate out of Solzhenitsyn.
We’ve all had our share of orphan’s porridge. Not every morning can be saved. No matter how serious the sleep hygiene, dedicated the meditations or fancy the dream journal stationary, some days feel like they’ve ended before they’ve started. After waking at 3am to fixate over something your mother said to you when you were 11, you’re in no mood, come sunrise, to play nanna in the kitchen, doling out loving portions to your inner child. Some days, in their golden glory, the oats hiss with dawn’s promise of romantic possibility. Other times, the globs of caulky grain never give in: arid and starchy, they won’t spare a drop of love for the likes of you.
All is not lost. More hot water is added. You sacrifice the last of your goji berries, and the fancy honey your wealthy gay friend gave you. And even if this bowl is irrevocably botched, tomorrow’s oatmeal will be better. And if not, there’s always the next day. If you’re making oatmeal, it means you’re not going anywhere. Come what may, you at least know where you’ll wake and how you’ll greet the sun.
The mornings blur, like the grains in your vat. The delights you experience—over this seasonal fruit or that extra dash of cinnamon—are impossible to share, likely to be forgotten. Describing today’s oatmeal is like explaining yesterday’s sunset. There’s no way to capture the ineffable. You’ve only a few precious minutes before the sun spills below the horizon; before the hot oatmeal congeals into mush. The buildup was worth it. There’s nowhere else you’d rather be.
A golden, gooey thank you to this week’s illustrator, Changyu Zou2. See more of her work here.
David Odyssey is a writer and astrologer. He shares essays on his personal Substack and flies off the handle on his podcast, The David Odyssey Show. His first book, When Saturn Returns, comes out in April.
Changyu Zou is an award-winning illustrator based in Savannah, Georgia. Most of her inspiration comes from words, as they can bring her endless thoughts and imagination. She likes to use collage, gouache, and Photoshop to create illustrations. Her works are always colorful and lively, which are often used in advertisements and magazines.
She has won several international awards, including the Ijungle Illustration Awards Editorial Gold Medal 2022; Society of Illustrators 65 Jury Selection; American Illustration 41 and 42 Chosen Winner, Communication Art Award of Excellence 2022; IDA Design Awards Multimedia-Animation Silver Medal 2022, etc.
Her clients include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, PLANSPONSOR, Politico, Christianity Today, Tordotcom Publishing, VinePair, Spectrum News, Girlfriend, Sojourners etc.
I am so quick to dismiss oatmeal, but this was just a lovely reminder. Also "must we sip everything out of a Mason jar we found in a ditch" is SO funny.