Spring Winds

All day storm and the partially leafed trees are fairly dancing. The first leaves are so tender they twist and writhe. Soft green. This front came in from the south, which is rare, and I feel like I'm seeing things in a mirror. Most of the day reading essays about the period 30,000 to 50,000 years ago and the fall of the great Neanderthal nation. Mid-day I steamed an artichoke and made a nice mayonnaise for dipping. It takes two hands to eat an artichoke, plus it's a damp and spattering dish, so I didn't read (I read at almost every meal) and just sat on my stool at the island and watched the rain. Rain on the window / changes the way I perceive / green in the hollow. An old friend calls, and I ask her to call back in five minutes, so that I can take something off the stove (onions and red peppers I was caramelizing toward an unknown end), roll a smoke and get a drink. When she calls back I'm well situated to listen. I could tell from her tone, in the first call, that I was going to be listening. Which I do. Another failed relationship, the abject fear of being alone, the cat has a tumor, the neighbors make a lot of noise. More germane, the wind shakes the house. I have windows opened, on the leeward side. I don't want to be pitch-poled in the night. Me giving anyone advice about a relationship is a joke, my track record is questionable, and I do actually want to be alone most of the time; it saves having to explain myself. Thunder, I'd better go. Slept very well and woke to an odd dream involving a pig that could write. Starving, so I fried a large skillet of potatoes and had a huge breakfast, with enough leftover for a folded fried potato and mayo sandwich for lunch. With a slice of onion this is an excellent sandwich and I've eaten them my whole life, standard fishing fare. Mom would fry them the night before and we'd take a quart of them in the cooler, a jar of mayo, an onion, and a loaf of white bread. In later years, when there was a bit more money, we'd also take sardines. Eating in a small boat, staked over a bream bed, are some of my happiest memories, though there are a great may happy memories. It seems almost criminal to have been raised in a functional family. To go fishing once a week (at least) and spend vacations with relatives in Tennessee and Mississippi, who always had, or lived close to, a stocked farm pond where the cows and mules would watch us for hours, chewing their cud. Another rain day. I think about the past, for a few hours, and it's like spreading out a reading of drift-glass. Then read a small book, 1885, about eating insects. Locust and grasshoppers are 50% protein, alfalfa hay might be 20%, a T-bone steak is 14.7%. Locust and grasshoppers are vegetarian. Consider the chicken, or the pig. Consider sucking crawfish heads, which most of us from the deep South do. You take your L/G and pull off the wings and legs, pinch the head off and most of the viscera pulls away. Grill them over a hot charcoal fire until they're crisp. Whatever dipping sauce you prefer. I like just dipping them in soy sauce. They need the salt. First Whip-O-Will, and I can hear the frogs down in the bottom. I'd forgotten how noisy spring evenings could be.