By Amanda Knox

I’ve been so busy this week—seeing a play, giving a talk, traveling, book editing, putting in my hours at the bookstore—I can’t focus. Of all things, I have a bone to pick with a dried goji berry. Ever bitten into one?

I’m at a loss. A single dried goji berry is many things all at once. It is delicious and disgusting. It is chewy, stringy, gritty. It is sweetly tart, bland, bitter. Bits of it stick to the crooks of your teeth like popcorn husks. I bite into one and think, “Bleh…?” Then I bite into another and think, “Why am I still eating this?” Meanwhile, my hand is already snaking back into the bag for a third. Against my will?  

There’s something weirdly satisfying about eating a goji berry that reminds me of people’s other strange compulsions. Like scraping fingernails across a chalkboard. Like debating politics with relatives. Like scratching bug bites and picking your nose.

I’m probably eating them wrong in the first place; I’ll have to ask my herbalist friend. Goji berries are also called wolfberries and red diamonds. They are rich in nutrients, though no more, really, than any other kind of berry.

I’m at a loss. That phrase, “at a loss,” was originally used to describe the puzzlement of bloodhounds who had lost the scent of their prey while the hunt. I can empathize with that. Imagine being so focused on your mission—nose to the ground, jowls and ears flopping, tail wagging, the howling of your fellows and hollering of your masters compelling you forward, but most of all the scent, so ripe you can taste it—and then you run up against a stream and, where did the scent go? Where am I?

I used to be frightened of the sound of a toilet flushing. The roar reverberated throughout the long, cold, tiled girl’s bathroom of my elementary school, and though I knew it was irrational, I feared the power of it might drag me into the watery vortex. I flushed and, hands shaking, staggered out of the stall. I felt weak and disoriented until I finally reached the carpeted hallway lined with third-grade art projects in bright, familiar, primary colors.

It takes a long time to process experiences. Too long for a full schedule. It seems like there’s barely any room, barely any time, for your intellect to catch up. I’ve thought that I can do well only one thing a day. When your focus is turned inward, towards processing a lot of things all at once, everything else outside of you can seem tilted, jagged, convex and scattered. As the world continues turning, the muscles and bones of your intellect and emotions are grinding and flexing.

It’s at times like these when you can smoothly go from watching Daniel Radcliffe’s eerie, symbolism-rich, Indie film, Horns, to Bill Murray’s sad clown special, A Very Murray Christmas.

I’ll never understand picking a fight for a fight’s sake. But those goji berries. I both love them and hate them.