and all that
Looking out from 7H high tide below and across the Bay out toward the Pass, Tuesday morning, watching and waiting as storm bands pass over.
Rosh haShana is just a week away, and as all human holidays are mainly about Food, there will be holiday Food ads on my computer, indeed, already are.
Breakfast this morning: when we have a hamburger for (noon) dinner, there’s usually a vegetable side, meaning I can’t eat but half of my hamburger that I made so huge, and the leftover half gets set aside then refrigerated until its moment arrives. A nice burger, pressed out before going into the sizzling pan, then further flattened, this one I pressed roasted garlic buds (Fresh Market) into it while the other side was searing, then flipped over and seared the garlic side, new, hadn’t tried that before, good one though. Bun toasting while. TJ’s extraordinary cheese on one side of the toasted bun and into the toaster oven to melt a bit while. Press minced Vidalia onions into melting cheese. Hamburger patty atop. Mayonnaise. Slice of red tomato (tomato slice was seared in the pan with the hamburger patty, because that brings out the flavor in the otherwise beautiful but bland tomato. Slivers of French raclette cheese on top of hot tomato slice. Mayo on top bun then press down hard on the assembly.
One serving cauliflower. Cut hamburger assembly in two approximately equal halves. Save half for Tuesday morning breakfast: remove bun top so as to reduce intake of carbohydrates that contribute to the extreme postprandial hypotension. Add more raclette cheese, stick assembly in microwave for 30 seconds. Breakfast. Rest of black coffee still hot in municode thermos after nearly two hours.
Storm bands are still sweeping in driving rain from Sunday’s hurricane, and we have lots of water coming in over the Bay window, towels mopping up on the windowsill before it gets to the floor. No worries, HV board are giving it proper attention. If it gets fixed soon, wonderful, otherwise no matter, it’s not my condo to be fooled with post-Tom anyway. Tuesday is rainy and grey. Bay water is brown, and high tide at this writing moment. I love this day, seriously, I mean it: wait till you look at eighty-six and see if you also don’t Love This Day, I guarantee.
Watching the Time, because I have to be at the church office before ten-thirty, when the printer-copier man is coming to code my laptop so I can print Sunday School handouts using the church equipment instead of my own here at home. In the meantime,
In the meantime I’m drafting this blogpost instead of directly online, because I’m reading The Hotel New Hampshire free online and I don’t want to mess up the computer setting and lose my place. Who knows what’s ahead as John the middle (of five) child narrates on, but so far it’s been hard to stand the pain from my laughter. Oh but of course, the bear just got shot and killed, that was a sad way to put the book down.
Why am I reading another novel? Because reading fiction, an absorbing story, is the very best way I know to escape from the world, and this was listed as recommended for someone by a bibliotherapist in an article I just read. And if I’ve ever read any John Irving (shame, shame if not), it’s been so many years that I don’t remember. This one is set starting the summer of 1939, when the couple were nineteen and fell in love away on summer jobs after high school graduation, and memories of the summer I was nineteen are still intense. The summer of 1955, nineteen coming up on twenty and a rising junior at Florida.
But why the need or desire to escape? Several reasons, or at least more than one reason. When you are a retired octogenarian cleric there are only two things to do all day: eat, and nap. If you’ve held on to part of your thinking capacity and managed to live into the electronic age, you can browse Facebook (no thank you), you can blog (sometimes, as now); if people are still suffering you on Sundays you may be able to draft a sermon once in a while, or gather up a Sunday School lesson. You can watch old films online: I like WW1 and WW2 films, and I just bought half a dozen old (most of them never opened, still in the cellophane wrap) John Wayne DVDs at the Re-Store for $5.40. Or you can read. I read plenty, but most of it serious stuff, this week, Bible scholars’ writings on First and Second Peter, for Sunday School next weekend (that’s what the class members asked for). Or you can totally escape into another Time, world, and person’s life by picking up a good novel, or someone’s memoir, which is how I got into The Hotel New Hampshire.
Why to escape? Because this week is overwhelming that, twenty years ago when America was relatively at peace, and I was on my second retirement, first from the U S Navy at age 42, then from parish ministry at age 63, and happily, contentedly serving as Interim Rector at Grace Episcopal Church, PCB, the stars suddenly fell, and the sky itself, that beautiful ‘nother Tuesday morning of 9/11, and everything changed forever, and I thought, When I got up this morning there was Peace: as from now we’re going to be at war the rest of my damn life.
It ended yesterday, with too many more dead. I watched the last USAF plane rising and departing Kabul. I’m still not to grips with it, that it all happened, whether it was helpful to anybody (yes, indeed it was helpful and offered hope to a full generation of young Afghans), how it was brought to an end (for all the pundit wisdom, there was no better or worse way to end it), and that it’s done. So what’s next? Our economy and technological state are based on war. Ants and chimpanzees that we are, we seem to have a natural predilection for war, I don’t think we can help it, so what’s next?
Well, obviously, a novel. One with a family I can become part of and live their life and world for a while.
T+