Which is why I was startled by what happened at SFMOMA.

Which was: I laughed.

Squares and rectangles rendered in plain solid black were as big as queen beds and garage doors. A black circle was the size of a hot tub.

"Two black canvases opposite each other contract the space and make its physical volume palpable," read the program. "The black canvases absorb light. They don't reflect light; they contain it, and thereby intensify their mass. They are weight as contained mass." 

I laughed: a stifled neigh of disbelief. I edged from room to room, observing squares.

I thought: No way can this be real. No way could a major museum make a big deal out of big black squares. Is this a performance piece whose spectators are being filmed effecting reverence? I drew close to the artworks, as the program invited me to. Their sludgy surfaces evoked blacktop. No way could this be real.

Or could it? Quoted in the program, Serra said: "If the room has enough compression, the piece will function." And: "If the room is too large, the drawing will read as an image." Okay. These are not images. I grant them that.

I do not understand abstraction, although in college I wanted to. I bought a Miró poster in a shop, then spent the rest of the semester wishing the Miró's red, black and yellow wisps would congeal into something recognizable, such as balloons.

I like pictures of things. Birds, boats. Call me pedestrian. Call me inferior. Call me a hick in a New Yorker cartoon, circa 1956, who gawks at abstract art and drawls Mah dawg could have done that.

My colleagues were enthralled. A pregnant woman was particularly avid. What do they see, I wondered, that I cannot? I was consumed with two opposit urges: Die of laughter. Die of shame.

What choice had I? This was an exhibition of black squares. This was hilarious. And equally obviously, I am an imbecile.

It slid like a sharp knife between my ribs, this fact of standing beside fellow writers whose enthusiasm for this show revealed them as smarter, deeper, more perceptive and more sensitive than I. What made them so? Higher IQs? The fact that they gazed at this art not only reverently but knowingly proved one thing: They were my superiors.

I had felt this same way one week before, while touring San Francisco bakeries with fellow journalists thanks to the Scharffen Berger chocolate company. We were served fabulous desserts, transcendent glories and epiphanies that dazzled on the plate and shimmered smoky-silky-cosmic on the tongue. We were served chocolate-chai cake with honeyed chocolate ganache; caramel-stuffed cupcakes with sea-salted chocolate-peanut-butter frosting; chocolate-cream cake with cacao nibs; and chocolate gelato with marshmallow creme. My colleagues deftly discussed feuilletines and liquid nitrogen. I could barely lick spoons and mumble Yum.

I should know more about baking and cooking and their terminology but all I ever do is eat and try to write about how food looks, smells and tastes. I should be better-educated about art and/or more open-minded because when I see squares I see only squares. I should be smart and good at these things and should not tell you any of this but you would know in any case because I am an idiot. A rube. A fake.

The voice that tells me this is the voice in my head that is my voice not some extraneous crazed "voices in my head" voice but my real voice saying things it learned to say long ago.

At SFMOMA, the voice in my head said I did not deserve an invitation to the exhibition. It said art is not always representational and others understand this. Why not me? The voice in my head said how can you live with your stupidity and lack of culture, but it also said ohmygod ohmygod black SQUARES how totally funny oh I will DIE.

Given a choice of death by shame or laughter I would pick laughter but shame will win.

This is because all circumstances even bordering on privilege or pleasure make me feel like an impostor and intruder and I become my own bouncer, throwing myself out. My presence anywhere pretty or pleasant is less justified than that of others. They are smarter, better educated, more committed, more attractive. They are hardworking, brave, passionate, compassionate. They deserve nice days. I do not.

I am among artworks and caramel-stuffed cupcakes only because I faked or fumbled my entrée. My attendance is a ludicrous accident or outright theft.

At the art show and the bakeries, I designated superiority on my colleagues. I conferred superiority on them, unasked. I did this automatically, silently. Could they tell? Did their flesh prickle with an unexpected rush? Did they rock on their heels as if drunk? Did they gloat without knowing they were gloating, or why? Do they still bask in this glory I gave them, even now?

Does self-esteem shuttle from me to them like automatic transfers? How many million such transfers have I made? It is a virtue to abase oneself before others, but these are not mere compliments.

I took pictures at SFMOMA. One includes a man wearing a snug brown blazer. Near him is a woman with a chenille shoulderbag. They are better than I. They must be.

My college roommate used to say that if you covet something someone has, you must be willing to take/do/be all the rest. Want someone's hair? Then take her boring boyfriend, her shoplifting habit and her C-minus in French. My ex-roommate said this technique always made her happy to be herself. If the man in the blazer and the woman with the bag -- along with everyone else at the art show -- are my betters, what have they that I want and what else of theirs would I have to accept? What if the woman cheats on her spouse and the man kicks dogs?

I know more about art and food than many in this world, albeit less than some. This should matter to me but it does not.

What classifies and codifies my days? The poison of comparison.

I was astounded to learn at age 27 that others do not always compare themselves to others and, if they compare themselves, do not always place themselves last. I had by then been at it nearly all my life. It seemed advisable to stop, but I could not. I caution myself daily to stop. I do not.

It should be easy, should shine with the promise of relief, like being offered oxygen after being pulled from the sea. Who would not breathe?

I am the one who makes everything into a game that others win. I am the referee who makes the rules, then plays by them to lose. I am the judge who decrees only guilty verdicts only to one suspect: me. I am the meter-reader unaware that my readings are based upon a broken gauge. I am the analyst whose lists, charts and hierarchies record ratios with one common denominator. More than. Less than. Worse. Worse. Worse.

These lists and charts and hierarchies disregard matters of degree and circumstance and taste. They disregard the fact that sometimes fish sticks really are better than vichyssoise.

We who hate ourselves against our own will see in black and white. We who hate ourselves against our own will deny ourselves the mercy of subjectivity.

I greeted the black squares and sweet desserts with a wide-open mind, wanting to love them. I did not. At least if I admit my ignorance, it does no harm.

That we know what we like and do not like should be enough. Let others in the museums and bakeries of this world like and dislike as they choose. God bless their bliss.

At SFMOMA, I asked the curator what he would tell people who said But these are just big black squares. He laughed and said Exactly! He assumed I was being rhetorical. He did not realize that my hypothetical moron was me.