March 17, 2025 
“Your brain is three pounds of Jell-O.”
The doctor was speaking, holding a colorful model of a human brain in her hands.
Is my brain three pounds of Jell-O? I google it: “Yes, the brain has a soft, squishy, and gelatinous consistency, often compared to Jell-O,” but “some people also compare the brain’s texture to tofu or butter.”
The main point seems to be it’s something you can eat.
I google that: “There is one organ that people should avoid eating at all costs: the brain. However, although it may seem ‘wrong,’ the good news is that consuming cooked human flesh is no more dangerous than eating the cooked flesh of other animals.”
Why the WEF is ‘wrong’ in quotes like that? And why is the fact that cooked human flesh is not dangerous to eat described as ‘good news’???
I am attending one of the plethora of events that have been held this season at my farm, Eyecandyland. This one is about brain health, “Brain Health for Peak Performance.”
I am not a rider, but I write columns and make dumb jokes. I’ve also taken up photography. I want to do those things as well as I can. I want to use this three pounds of tofu.
After the presentation by the doctor, which could have been ten times longer as far as I was concerned, we all hung around in the light-strung pavilion and ate fresh-cooked sliders and pasta salad. Several people poured overfull glasses of the “mystery” punch, alcoholic or no? Oh yeah, that’s definitely alcoholic.
“I realize,” I said to one person, “how little I trust my brain.”
My interlocutor looked at me blankly.
“Do you know what I mean?” I continued, “I’m so afraid of it.”
Another ill-advised confession! This person sleeps happily at night. Well, so do I! It is the day really, that is the problem.
Speaking of days, this one dawned in the most delightful way. The sun came up amidst a haze that threw golden light everywhere and a balmy breeze was blowing and everything on the farm seemed torn out of the neurons of a very healthy, trustworthy brain, like pictures out of a picture book.
I had peeked my head around the corner just outside of my bedroom, intending only to take the briefest measure of things and crawl back into bed, when the radiance of the morning and the caressing touch of the breeze sucked me out of doors.
The Irishman was giving a lesson in the ring. A boy rode a pony. Three or four other riders and their mounts criss-crossed the field. The dogs rolled in the grass. The South American passed me, looking sweaty and ill.
“Damn,” I said jocularly, “you don’t look any better.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
The South American has been sick. If you heard me say that before and find yourself asking, “Still?” I would say no, not still, this is a whole other illness, the other was a flu, before that was a malaise, and now it is something respiratory that also apparently makes his face very sweaty.
He never stops working through any of this, his Jell-O is strong and very friendly and that is unfortunately why he acquires so many illnesses, because he is indefatigably friendly, shaking every hand and euro-kissing everyone. It never enters his tofu that maybe they’re carrying a communicable disease.
My tofu is riddled with paranoias like that. Except people like me say there’s no such thing as paranoia.
I golf-carted over to the Irishman. “What a beautiful day!” I exclaimed. “Is it a beautiful day?” I had to check, because maybe I was just irrationally happy.
“It is, it is,” the Irishman assured me.
“I just thought maybe I only thought it was a beautiful day because Spy won.”
Spy is a horse ridden by the Irishman and he went over, across the state, to a place nearly as beautiful as this morning, a place called TerraNova (that means “new land”), where he took the first spot in the 2-star $100,000 Grand Prix.
Although I am a WEF columnist, our competitive show life down here in Florida during the winter season serves up a bevy of choices. I don’t know what happened, but somehow the horse show landscape down here got split wide open so we have Wellington International and The Ridge in Wellington, the World Equestrian Center and HITS in Ocala, the Venice Equestrian Tour, and TerraNova near Sarasota.
It really tickles my tofu to have so many options.
And who did I see after the Grand Prix, in this place that seemed, after three hours of driving, to be in the middle of nowhere, but that same crazy artist jumpmaker and his forbearing young son! They both leaned, as cool as a couple of James Deans, against a jump of their own manufacture.
They were just in Doha 20 minutes ago.
I went over and, brandishing my photographic equipment, begged for a job. Because I knew none but he could be designing the jumps in Ocala next week, where the Fuchs/Guerdat-boycotted totally-lame League of Nations will be held.
I don’t want to go but I want to go. That’s how it always is in this Jell-O.
I mean—what the WEC!
I got the job. You’ll hear all about it next week.
Jiggle, jiggle.
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