When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.
Luckily, I discovered ice skating when I was eight and a half years old. There were two wonderful ponds within walking distance of my house. After all the physical activity the summer provided, I craved movement in the cold of winter. I had no skates, so Mom stuffed socks into my brother's old ones.
I have a tattoo on my foot that says 'it's a whale' in Japanese, because Japanese people kill whales. My stuffed whale was like most children's teddy bear. I took it with me everywhere. I slept with it. I couldn't live without my whale.
If it's done really well, you don't want big portions because you think, 'That was so fulfilling. I'm not stuffed. I feel great.'
Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.
For me, there is no better tapa than a really good stuffed olive.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
