Usage of the term indulgence in my experience most often accompanies a calculated self-satisfaction. Such as indulging oneself in butter tarts. It is however also indicative of the extension of time for performance of an obligation; for example, indulgence for payment of a debt. Both indulgences share a degree of satisfaction (though the character switches from transparency to ambiguity). The more discernible difference perhaps is that in the first instance one indulges oneself; whereas in the second instance the indulgence is vicarious. Today I enacted the delivery of first-hand indulgence.
What makes this particular episode in my otherwise plodding life especially noteworthy is that it involves not only a remorselessly indulgent objective (the bakery department at Farm Boy) but more strikingly, having to shop to get there in the first place. It has been months since I shopped anywhere. Getting around in a store is for me no longer appealing. While I can sit almost endlessly, walking or standing is punishing. But for some inexplicable reason today I suddenly felt both ambitious and athletic. Perhaps it was the unanticipated and sudden evaporation of my perceived 24-hour cold. Or maybe my Tylenol Arthritis pills were working particularly well. It wasn’t the weather (a bit dull). But otherwise it may have been everything else. After all today I’m apparently enjoying one of those favourable days of unanticipated well-being and general urbanity especially welcome on a Saturday when the worldly commotion tones down.
Naturally all this is by way of disguise of the unforgivable acts of indulgence which unfolded. As I say I found getting around (with a shopping cart) not as dreadful as it has been in the past. Though I haven’t frequented the store for months, nothing much appeared to have changed. More persuasively, the overall high quality of goods appeared not to have changed. I was tempted again and again to pick up things – fresh blueberries, Clementine oranges among so many others. But I continued wheeling my empty cart past these relentless temptations towards the back corner of the store where the bakery department used to be housed.
And it was still there. In all its full-blown magnanimity. Don’t ask me what I collected. Though I’ll try. Baklava for certain; two kinds of lemon tarts; freshly baked Pinsa focaccia bread; flatbread; garlic stuffed olives; peanut butter; cheddar cheese; oh, and butter tarts!
Flatbreads were amongst the earliest processed foods, and evidence of their production has been found at ancient sites in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and the Indus civilization.
In 2018, charred bread crumbs were found at a Natufian site called Shubayqa 1 in Jordan (in Harrat ash Shaam, the Black Desert) dating to 12,400 BC, some 4,000 years before the start of agriculture in the region. Analysis showed that they were probably from flatbread containing wild barley, einkorn wheat, oats, and Bolboschoenus glaucus tubers (a kind of rush).
My retail inadequacy was instantly evident at the checkout counter where I realized I hadn’t remembered to bring one of the many carrying bags we store in the car for this very purpose. No matter, I was so pleased that I had, first, resisted the perils at the entrance, and, second, remembered what goodies to collect in the bakery. Truth be known many if not all the items have been on our grocery list before but it has been a long time since I did the work to assemble them. In the result I am feeling astonishingly relaxed and at ease. Effervescence is such a suitable word for a Saturday afternoon. And – what hoh! – the sky is clearing!