Not less than six years ago I was a front desk clerk at Sedona Winds Independent Living Retirement Community in Sedona, Arizona, USA. One of my minor chores was to recycle paper menus into scratch paper. I would often use that paper to compose acrostic poetry.

Today I found a work in progress on one such scratch-paper piece. The piece is not a perfect rectangle, and that may disconcert some, especially those with at least a touch of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Let’s be charitable and playful and say that this is a little life lesson in not taking anything for granted, including right-angularity.

Here is what ended up being the back of a drawn trilogy of acrostics:

It is likely, though not certain, that I created this menu on Microsoft Word, as another minor clerk’s chore. I did most but not all of them while working the 3-to-11PM shift. My instructions for the menus were to open the previous day’s menu Word doc, do a Save As with that day’s date as part of the name, and then change only those particulars that were different with the current day’s menu. If I’d removed the quotation marks from “Rolls upon Request,” which I would have if given the latitude, I would be deviating from orders. I would also have made the upper-case boldface D “hidden” text, since it was an indicator of which menu in the master book it was, and not necessary for the dining room patrons to see. But mine was not to question, nor deviate.

One perk of the job was that they fed me the meal of my choice, and a master chef was running the kitchen, so Goody-Goody Yumdrops for me while a Sedona Winds employee. I miss that, but not too much, because in my current job I often get a complimentary meal, depending on the Manager of the Day’s decree.

Here’s what is now on the other side of the menu.

Before this morning only the acrostics and the endwords of each line were there. So, in collaboration with my younger self, I have finished the Squanderlust acrostic, including a spot illustration of a superhero wannabe in Virtual Reality being held aloft by a ridiculous VR bird, and have started spot illustrations for Ponder Pantry and for Wander Wanter. Both of those will need cleanup and zing.

Or not. I haven’t decided whether the image is better off being left for another six-plus years. I gained a lot when I did the work this morning, but I lost a galaxy’s worth of fresh possibilities. Squanderlust is now set in cement. The other two might be better off wandering the Quantum Multiverse for creation patronage. (Rationalization for being not up to finishing, most likely!)

Squanderlust

Suppressive superheroes blush when donning mask & cowl
Quiescent polymorphs are given choice of fish or fowl
Unvirtued VR simulcastswell suit the parvenu
And one soul’s U of A might be another’s ASU
No self-respected citizen sets forth till s/he assesses
Desiderata such that Uberjoy outweighs the stresses
Enteric eschatology gives faithful fold a Lyft
Remaining to be seen is if there’s Substance to the gift

A long time ago the phrase “wretched excess” was in vogue. Those with Squanderlust seek such. I think we all get a touch of Squanderlust from time to time. 🙂