Last summer, I maintained a fan account on Instagram, dedicated to the meal substitute MealSquares. At the time, I told my confused friends and family that it was an art project. Looking back on it, it’s obvious that this was the product of a sad and deranged mind grappling with the void, the void that lies on the other side of aspiration.
My book had just been released, and, while it was well-received, the world did not fall at my feet and proclaim me a genius, the book didn’t sell a million copies, and it wasn’t clear what I should do. In fact, nothing was clear to me, except the love of my fiancee, who was charitably putting up with my morose state.
How to fill the hours? How to seek cash from the ether? What, even should I eat? I was looking for simple solutions, and MealSquares provided the answer. The MealSquare is sort of like Soylent but way dorkier, a solid bar that promises complete nutrition. You can get a box delivered to your house every month, and eat nothing but MealSquares, and thus at least have the matter of nutrition taken care of, so you can free up your mind to do, well, something else.
I cannot say, in honesty, that MealSquares are good. They have a dull nut-brown flavor, like a dowdy relative of a chocolate bar. They’re a bit dry and crumbly. The user’s manual that they come with suggests you consume them with water, to manage this.
MealSquares are fine. But the problem with fine things is that the world has good things in it, and that your brain’s reward function is capable of outsmarting you. It’s very hard to choose displeasure based on a vague principle.
Here’s what happened when I tried to eat MealSquares for every meal. My stomach mysteriously cramped up, even though I felt vigorous and strong, even though MealSquares were more nutritious than the other food I was eating. Sometimes, I’d just find myself walking down the street, towards a burrito, not remembering having left my home.
On a family trip, I photographed a MealSquare by the pool. I think I left it in the hotel room instead of eating it.
Eventually, boxes of MealSquares started piling up. I gave them away to friends, but I didn’t have enough friends to get rid of all my MealSquares. One box got moldy. I canceled my standing order, and trudged into the LA winter, which is just the LA summer with the thermostat turned down.
There was no simple solution to hunger. There was no simple solution to life in general. I still wonder what to eat, and how, finally, to balance the equation composed of time, fun, and money. But I’m trying to stop looking for simple solutions, for simple procedures that will make reality completely manageable. I’m trying to be comfortable with tension, with flux, with searching.
I can’t pretend that I’m a guy who eats the same nutrient bar every day. The end of pretending, though a cold pleasure, is a pleasure nonetheless.
So one hand I only got through three boxes of Mealsquares in my life, and I was eating just one a day for breakfast. Ok, 2.7 boxes, the last 0.3 ultimately molded in the trash can.
On the other hand, have you considered that your failure to master yourself and the universe has to do with your cowardice and lack of will, giving up the perfect post-industrial means of nutrition just because your brain was trained to crave burritos?