Sunday Brunch

On Sundays, some satisfy their hunger with manducating the Eucharist. I’m not among them. I need a special treat, preferably Asian, and neither con- nor trans- substantiation will do the trick. I need, as Paul Muldoon somewhere says, “all sorts and conditions of dim sum.” So I’m off, for the first time in many months, to a Chinese restaurant where the price is right, and I can keep the shumai and the pork buns coming, as long as I want. But before I go, I have to find just the right reading material to bring along for the ride. Tenth of December? Can’t And Won’t? Moby Dick? The Selected Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague? I don’t want to get duck sauce on any of these books, even if they are paperbacks. Perhaps the usual disappointing up-to-date issue of the always-disappointing New Yorker?  Back issues of the TLS? I see this is going to take time, and I’m now beginning to worry. It’s getting late for the mid-day brunch, and I don’t want to get there after the makers of the dim sum have become exhausted, and cranky, or something runs out. Why is everything so difficult? Why must I always have something to read, no matter where I go, by way of vademecum and viaticum? Won’t wonton soup and scallion pie be enough, just this once? The minutes are passing. What’s wrong with me?