In Praise of Chocolate Cake

I'm having a breakfast of raisin bread toast and homemade chocolate cake, a carbo-rush more potent than heroin. Euphoria rushes down my bloodstream. I have the sleepy half-closed eyes of blissful drunk. My stomach is full and happy, and for now you couldn't convince me that there is a single thing wrong with the world. Except that I just ate the last of the chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is the best cure for most of what ails us, at least for a short while. Other cakes and most pies won't do as much.

Chocolate cake is the warm hope of a worthwhile future. It centers the mind and quiets the soul. I recommend it, in moderation and in occasional moderate excess, for all ailments of heart and thought. Imagine the first genius who harnessed this magic. A leap forward for civilization greater than the wheel. Finally in the dreary cold rains of hunting and gathering and the snuffing out of fire there was a comfort, a reason for living more dependable than sex. Pour your glasses high with cold milk and toast: to chocolate cake and homemade frosting, a mouthful of bliss, a gift from the distant past, and as good a reason as most to strive another day.

We have to hang on to gentleness and our simple joys, because the world hurtles on to an awful and uncertain end. Greeks are storming the Parthenon. A crazed Pakistani immigrant hatches a half-baked bomb plot on the streets of New York City, trying to turn a used Nissan Pathfinder and bags of fertilizer into an instrument of hopelessness and savage glory. In Arizona Latinos are the new Jews, and in a few months they might be required to wear yellow stars on their coats. Yet something has to be done to stem the tide of lawlessness and violence that flows north from Mexico, the torrent of illegal drugs and street kidnappings and vicious gangs.

The fate of the world oozes up to shore in sticky tarballs and rages like an out of control fire. Everywhere there is mayhem and uncertainty. If you stop to think about it, you have to wonder if it's time to run to the hills or learn to shoot, master the art of living off what's left of the land in the aftermath of the apocalypse. The United States owns 5,113 nuclear warheads, and all it takes is one to touch off a gushing flaming ecodisaster that nothing could contain. Within 10 miles of the blast everything would be leveled. The air would be poisoned for many lifetimes.

It's no use. I can't think about this, or spend another moment wondering about the unmanageable and unimaginable mess we have made of the world. It's impossible to think globally. The stock of the world plunges 500 points in a day. It erupts into flames at the touch of a button. The trigger is caressed by the thumbs of a thousand crazed madmen with hearts full of horror and rage. They have to most to say about the future, and what they're saying is unintelligible. It's a language no one can understand. It's fueled by hate beyond reason and a frenzy of misguided purpose. They love death and vengeance. Do you think the next jihadist will make such clownish mistakes, be thwarted by passing street vendors or the passengers on an airliner?

Now I'm ready for a nap. The best days have gentle beginnings, and leave aside the miseries of the world for a while. Chocolate cake isn't the answer, but it's better than most of the unanswerable questions that plague the evening news.