stories
"By the time life was brought to perfection, old age had arrived" it begins, homing in on me to the core. 7H is the best, including the outlook in all directions, full sweep of StAndrews Bay, sidewalk overlook of park and downtown StAndrews and from high above I can visualize it as it was seventy-five years ago; elevator between 7H and weatherproof underground garage, indeed the little apartment itself. It would be perfect to live here from twenty to ninety, but seventy nine to whatever also works for life brought to perfection.
The quotation? From a story. While doing my Lenten discipline reading, magazines piled up around here, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Smithsonian. This past week I started back into them, thinking slowly but not essentially or even necessarily to catch up. Favorites include letters from readers, fiction in The New Yorker (at Times it's borderline macabre though, not my favorite), Hannah Goldfield's weekly "Tables for Two" report of her visit or visits to a (generally new) out of the way New York restaurant, various articles in all three magazines. I read what interests me. When we're both finished, I peel the address label off and Linda leaves the magazines on the shelf in the "post office" downstairs and it quickly disappears..
Saturday evening blogging, doubtless into Sunday morning. We had a lovely day. With a scary band of weather, it turned violent about five-thirty Saturday as dark set in, heavy rain, mostly passed, but just now a huge streak of lightning outside 7H window.
On the porch for supper of tea and six steamed shrimp, three royal reds and three huge pinks, from Buddy Gandy's. While there I also bought oysters in pint container and their two largest Spanish mackerel. The shrimp are excellent, they always do a good work with their steamer, "butter" and Old Bay seasoning. The oysters are for forking one each onto a saltine cracker, salting lightly (they are always what Apalachicola locals called "washed and blowed" which rinses off the saltiness); if they're half shell in a restaurant they're usually cold, salty ones, needing neither cracker nor salt, just tip up and pour into the mouth. Anyway, light supper on 7H porch watching the offshore thunderstorm come ashore with wind, rain, and lots of bright, noisy action. Mackerel dressed and in the refrigerator, to cook for Sunday dinner after church. As I say, life is perfect.
It was a good day at the Boulder County Fairgrounds Osprey nest too. When I logged on to look, the osprey couple were proud owners of a new egg. I backed up the live-feed video to a point in the day where it was still just the two of them, then let it run so I could watch the actually egg laying. These are unusual ospreys: the father bird seems even more excited than the mother bird. He promptly sat on the egg, initiating incubation, and here we go. However,
when I checked first thing this morning, the weather is 30°F in Longmont, Colorado and both parents sitting on the side perch, egg alone in the nest. IDK.
Mug of hot & black from my coffee club.
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Stories! Whether it's religious stories with crucified Jesus suddenly appearing to a couple of sad disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Mark, the original of our canonical gospels, has no resurrection appearances), fantasy fiction on television, the homey adventures of Father Tim, the Marsh-Wiggle with the children in Narnia, Harry Potter facing He Who Cannot Be Named, All in the Family with Michael and the Pattersons growing up and old in Canada; or a decades long favorite Calvin and Hobbes whom my father puzzled over while I was captivated and couldn't understand that my father didn't "get it" -though now, well beyond his age, I understand
we love stories, buy into, the more outrageously incredible the better and fonder, adopt the characters as real, grow fond of the characters. "Peanuts" with Good Ol' Charlie Brown when I was in college in the middle 1950s. A story going round about Calvin on his deathbed turning Hobbes over to Francis, his youngest grandchild. Not the first such, some Time ago I read one about Calvin and Susie married, and Hobbes as forgotten as Puff the Magic Dragon, then Calvin watching from afar as Hobbes picked up with, maybe it was Calvin & Susie's young son. The stories are charmingly real and true for us even though we know they're not. Beloved fiction is part of us and our lives. Just contemplating on a Sunday morning when Jesus will appear to disciples in a room with doors locked and barred, and Thomas, who wasn't there, doesn't believe it when they tell him. Part of the charm of the resurrection is that it's so outrageously incredible that even one of Jesus' closest companions doubts it. But then he get to see and touch. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.
RSF&PTL
T
Breakfast - - second mug of hot & black, three royal red shrimp, and on lettuce a couple spoons of egg salad half hens' eggs half duck eggs.