Steve Felt

“The thing about Doady’s brownbread is when you take a bite of it you’ve taken a bite out of the elements, earth, air, fire and water all, and while your mouth negotiates with the grainy dryness now made a ball by the moisture of the butter, while you realise that by an alchemy of bakery the lump of the bread in your mouth is bigger than it seemed in your hand, keep chewing, and that there’s nothing you can do now because you’re getting a first-hand practical demonstration of what Duns Scotus called Thisness, keep chewing, the dense solid mass of the undeniable, you can say nothing for a bit. You can wave at a couple of drowsy bees warmed awake and delirious on the early coconut of the furze blooms. You can make a low throat sound to signal you’ll say something shortly, but while you’re eating Doady’s brownbread, keep chewing, you’re gagged by the essential stuff of substance, that insists on its own primacy, that, like life itself, is partways laughing at you and partways saying Take me seriously, because otherwise it may just choke you. So, I said nothing for a bit.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness