March 16, 2004:

Professionals at lunch, thin, Asian and South Asian, talking together in muted voices about their heavy European colleague.

"It should be enough to make her give up meat," whispers one, eyes wide.

The other agrees, shocked inarticulate, able only to nod and add, under her voice, "It's sick."

Is it? People's unhappiness takes so many forms, some internal, some external. When unhappiness assumes such tangible shape it seems almost evil to condemn it moralistically. Which is a sort of oxymoron, I recognize.