"Live every moment
Love every day
'Cause before you know it
Your precious time slips away"
- Live Every Moment (REO Speedwagon)
It was with hesitation that I sat down at Clarendon street Taco Bill recently to enjoy a meal and the company of friends and work colleagues. I look back at that time, the time of self-doubt and questioning, and see myself as a much younger person. It had been six long years since I had first seen nachos, a taco and a burrito on the same plate, and yes, I enjoyed it at the time. Then why so hesitant? I think Al Pacino summed it up best in David Mamet's 'Glengarry Glen Ross';
"Great meals fade in reflection. Everything else gains. You know why? 'Cause it's only food. This shit we put in us, it keeps us going. It's only food."
Perhaps Mamet didn't go far enough. For instance, I had a really great steak on the weekend - maybe the best I've had - but now that my belly is full of "fuel" again, the thought of bleeding meat is making me feel queasy. And it was great! Maybe that's why people post negative reviews, because the food they've just eaten not only makes them regret their order, but casts aspersions over their decisions that had previously been seen as fond memories.
I didn't need to feel so nervous. Food was good, company beyond enjoyable. We laughed, we shared food and memories. It might be the final time that we as a group would sit down to a meal; a combination that would never be repeated. Like the texture of the Original Taco Bill Margarita, which only seems to exist inside the pastel-walls and thatched ceiling of Bill's establishment. Impossible to replicate.
And now that my food has settled, and I've walked in the sun for twenty minutes, I don't feel so crash hot.
So that's what I'm trying to say, I guess. I ate Taco Bill twenty minutes ago and feel queasy now. But what does that even mean? Sometimes I'm queasy after lunch when I don't go to Taco Bill, because I've eaten a Bánh mì and a Chomp and a Curly Wurly. Sometimes we've got other stuff going on in our lives, and maybe this queasy feeling is nerves bunching up in my belly because our friend is leaving us. I don't think that's it, but I don't want to rule it out. That's not fair to Taco Bill
Anyway, Taco Bill was pretty good. I had a good time. I don't know why I was so hesitant, but I believe now that it was the reaction of someone who was letting his thoughts be dictated by people who had composed reviews without undertaking the necessary introspection and self-questioning required to be helpful to other diners. I was reserved, I was a prisoner in my own trap, I was mixing my metaphors. What I wasn't doing was what REO Speedwagon so eloquently expressed at the top of this page. And in the end, that falls on me.
So if you take anything from this review, I hope it's that you meet each new day with vigour and panache, that you buckle swash, meet every challenge with élan, and rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Don Henley read more