...But a ______________ is Fruit and Cake

I was reading the end of Daniel Dennett's "Elbow Room" on an airplane this weekend and during a passage about Newtonian mechanics I suddenly had a strong, visceral craving for a particular type of sweet. I couldn't put my finger on what it was but I strong impression of how it tastes -- tart, kind of a mealy mouthfeel. After a moment I realized I was thinking about a Fig Newton. Ah, that makes sense.

Once I finished "Elbow Room" I immediately started Oliver Sacks' new "Musicophilia", which touches on similar types of partially occluded linkages in the brain, for instance where a patient can discuss a topic and five minutes later start humming a tune whose words relate to that topic, but without being able to place the song's title or lyrics. (Of course in my case this isn't consistent and pathological; otherwise I'd probably be the least justifiably troubled subject of an Oliver Sacks story.) I think it's fairly fascinating that these kinds of mental events exist and what they seem to indicate about the unconscious connection-making that underlies the operation of the mind. I described all this to Kyle and she thought it was interesting too, but mainly for the fact that I'm capable of craving Fig Newtons at all.