What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

In the last few months, I got addicted to a new delight, Nutella (chocolate-nut spread) with crunch peanut butter on toasted white Italian loaf bread. My days are not complete without eating this poor man's delicacy at some time of the day.

Today is no different. I woke up hungry from my afternoon nap and stumbled to the kitchen. I can almost hear you asking, what are you doing napping in the afternoon. When your life is completely demolished like the two towers of World Trade Center, when you've lost all hope of employment, come to the verge of losing the best relationship of your life, when you're going to the gym every like it is your job, one needs a nap in the afternoon. Sometimes I even wish that I can sleep for longer periods of time, and perhaps sleep entire days out of my way. At this point life became this hurry up and wait process leading up to the good times that lay ahead. The existence of the good times ahead was starting to seem quite questionable like the unreal stories of the three holy books.

The cool kitchen tile felt good on my feet, as the fridge hummed a familiar tune. The spike of the florescent lights above as I turned the light on somewhat woke me up. I went through the pantry looking for something to eat. Then I remembered that I had not yet had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.

I put the two slices of bread in the toaster that slowly blushed and turned crimson. The sweet smell of the Italian bread started to waft out of the toaster as I unscrewed the top of the peanut butter. Soon the slices popped out of the toasters like college buddies on crack. The only thing that was missing was the toasts saying "oh mi god like how's it going??"

I took a table knife from the drawer and scooped a large glob of Nutella with it to spread on the bread. I was still dazed from my sleep so it seems what followed happened in slow motion, with the deep hoarse sound effects and everything. The Nutella started to drip from the knife onto the slice of bread on the plate. It was a hot day, when the room temperature is higher Nutella gets this viscous consistency like honey. So it drizzled on quite ordinarily but then it started to scribble. No I am not losing it, it scribbled an uppercase "T", followed by a "r", "o", "y" all lowercase.

My hand still over the toast, hovered frozen in time, frozen between sanity and acceptance of full on your regular every day insanity. There it was, even Nutella was spelling my name. The only thing it did not do was to keep writing on to tell me that I should give up this whole New York "I'll make it there, I'll make it anywhere" thing.

A few second later the analytical, skeptic, rational Troy kicked in. But he too was a little baffled. Even upon close inspection, the Nutella simply spelled my name on the toast.

I called my cousin immediately for a reality check. He told me that I was going insane being cooped up in my apartment and that I needed to get out and come over to his place so that we can go to dinner like normal people.

I obediently left the toast and Nutella on the counter and got dressed and left. The rest of the evening was pretty unremarkable. I had almost forgotten about the whole incident until I came back home to find the toast and my name on it staring back at me from the dark kitchen counter.

I decided to take the weirdness of this all head on, and took several pictures of the anomaly. Strangely enough although I used two different cameras all of the images came out blurry. Either my hands were shaking or I was truly experiencing an extraordinary event.

Either way, I was obviously entering the world of the weird with day-long naps, psychic dreams, strange daily coincidences and finally Nutella readings.