You may think it inconsequential that an empty
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love. You may
have studied Shakespeare, Bayesian probability,
Goethe and Shelley, Darwin and Einstein.
Perhaps your idea of perfect relaxation is sipping
tea on a rainy day as film noir plays on the TV
and the pitter-patter of rain tickles your eardrums.
Perhaps, at this moment, you feel too tired, too
cynical, too important, too old or too young
to marvel at such banalities. I have been in
your place and more. Yet this morning the gravity
of this war-torn epoch hit me square in the throat;
and would you believe, my friend, that what saved
me was that very last dollop of toothpaste—rinsing
away the residue of yesterday’s ghastly failures?
Ode to the Last Dollop
