8:00am: last night I went to sleep hungry. Not because I didn't have any food, not because I lacked any kind of nutritional desire but because I was too focused on finishing the twenty pages left in my essay on man's instinctual behavior versus social behavior. I had fallen asleep after ten pages and this morning, woke up unable to think of the next sentence to finish up my essay. I sat in front of my coffee table until 9:30 to try and come up with something to write. I usually do my writing on my coffee table because my work desk is usually too cluttered with mail and miscellaneous magazines but this morning, I didn't have the patience to move the laptop over to the desk so I just sat in front of the coffee table, trying to figure out the final ten pages of my essay. I stared at the computer monitor as my stomach alerted me that I needed food. Not before I finish this paper I told my stomach but my stomach wasn't on the same wavelength and kept with its annoying way of getting attention. I ignored it and continued staring into my monitor. Nothing was coming out and my eyes were feeling drowsy once again, very similar to the moments leading up to my slumber last night. I needed to keep awake and finish the final ten pages but my body told me to lie down and sleep. I had written the first 90 pages so easily and fluidly but was halted at the final ten. So hard to finish what I started and most of the time I would just put it off to the side but this paper was different. It was something that I had worked on for the last year to make the deadline which was later on in the day and something which was bound to put me in a league above the one I was in now. I gazed above to a poster hanging up on my wall of the great jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk, and decided to put a record of his on. Bebop, doowop, ting bat, debop. The music motivated me to make something for myself to eat. I looked in the refrigerator and found no leftovers to fill my annoying stomach with. I opened my food cabinet and took out some angel hair spaghetti noodles and a bottle of marinara sauce. Debop to dop. Bing bat dong. Dadadada do da. I started chopping away at the onions and threw them on the fry pan. I mixed the sauce in and waited for the water to boil to throw the noodles in. Monk was going up and down on the 88 keys of the piano and I was lucky enough to enjoy it. Padowap. Dingdong bat dap. Yeah, that was it. The water was done breaking down the carbohydrates in the noodle to make it soft and sticky and I was ready to mix it in with the sauce that I had prepared. I laid some napkins on my coffee table and poured myself a glass of orange juice. I emptied the fry pan onto a nice porcelain plate and sat down, ready to eat. That was when I realized that Jazz and spaghetti went so well together. So well that I found myself, twirling my fork in the noodles to the beat of the drums. After I had licked my plate clean and the record came to a halt I was left in front of the monitor same as I had left it thirty minutes ago. I put my hand on the keyboard and finally was able to type away at it. Monk and Spaghetti had given me the strength to finish something I had started, and put me in a class above what I was that day.
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