Toaster

Every morning, I make myself a piece of toast. I do not have a toaster. I make it in my oven's broiler. This works just as well, except that my oven does not have a timer, and does not spit out the toast once it has become toasted. So I must remember my toast. This seems simple, but it is not.

In order not to burn my toast, I must think mostly about my toast for as long as my oven takes to toast it. I do not need to think only of my toast, but the majority of my conscious mind must attend to the toast, or I will forget it and it will burn. It will become, not toast, but char. But who wants to think with 51% of their conscious mind (at least!) about toast? Perhaps for a second or two you might want to think about toast, its crunch, its taste. Perhaps even for 30 seconds you might want to think about toast. But who wants to think about toast for as long as it takes to make sure it becomes toast, in order to make sure it does not become something else, something hard and black and inedible (or something on fire and inedible)?

I realize how little I truly want to think about toast (though I want very much to taste toast), because almost every day it burns. It burns because I promise myself to give at least 51% of my attention to the toast, but I do not keep my promise. I am distracted by other things. These are things that I believe are more deserving of 51 or an even greater percent of my attention than toast. (I admit that these things will not burn if I give them less.)

Whenever I begin to do another thing too wholly, too absorbingly, I know I will burn the toast, even if I seem to myself to do so only for a few seconds, a minute. It does not matter for how short a time I care about another thing more. When the toast is cooking it is sensitive to whether I have given it only 49% of my conscious mind or less. My toast seems jealous of me, and will spite me by burning if I do not give it all the attention it requires. Very often, I eat burned toast, because I am unwilling to think mostly about toast for as long as it takes to toast, and I am unwilling to admit defeat.

And because I am unwilling to buy a toaster.