Misanthrope?

Through the window of the small building he lives in, he sees a blue sky and Mediterranean trees growing from a hill strewn with white rocks. The trees are sinewy, wind-battered things .

By his bed there is a dresser with a candle and a bowl of oatmeal. He regards the oatmeal.

He tried for a while to eat it with a stick, but the spoon was better.

He chuckles, his hands in his lap. He is thinking about the fool who thought of the fool who had chosen the stick, this second fool who brooded over the choice of the stick.

Why, the second fool had plaintively thought, as he lay awake at night on his straw mattress, tickled by the night breeze, can one not see at the first that a spoon is the better choice? Why does one dally with a stick, with oatmeal full of wood fiber and bits of bark and the petty irritation of an inflamed tongue?

It is a shame, he’d thought. So much time wasted on an inelegant method of eating.