Nothing Obvious

I love the texture of morels, the mouth feel, and I like to stuff them, with crab meat and bread crumbs, enough cheese to hold things together, also a thick stew, chicken broth and caramelized onion, that I love for its extravagance, and I do a risotto with them that is sublime. Quick trip to town, a couple of perfume samples in the mail, two New Yorkers. I needed more butter. 70 degrees when it started raining again, I'd been to town and back, I'd collected enough morels for tomorrow, eaten very well, and settled in. That world, out there, doesn't interest me much. The best the new scents was Black (Bulgari) which is one of the best perfumes I've ever smelled. Later, I needed a snack, so I'd sautéed some sliced morels in salted butter, on toast, with an egg, and the smell of mushroom, browned butter and shallots. Shallots are perfect with morels, I find garlic to be too much, onions, also, too aggressive, but shallots are just right. I need to raise shallots as they are so god-damned expensive, but the smell, I thought, might be a nice masculine scent, mushrooms and a nice animalistic (civet?) top-note drying into a leathery musk. Bacon in the background. When it started raining hard, I shut down everything. All night long, with varying intensity, from patter to kettle drum. I got up, around three, made a cup of tea, sat in the dark, and remembered other storms. When the early morning news came on the radio, it was all about flooding and road closures, a Level Two flood alert, stay off the roads. Perfect. I'm prone to picking up odd books at the library sales, so I spent the day reading about killing man-eating tigers in India. These books, and there are many of them, British Service Officers always wrote their memoirs, are actually interesting to read. Bored to death, stationed in Borneo, some of them became decent observers. Identifying specific animals by their paw prints. Identifying certain plants. I love this stuff. My sister called and Mom is dying, we talk for a long time. Sis says there's no reason for me to come down, my brother and nephew are there, in from California, and she knows I deal with grief my own way. Physically, the trip would be too much for me, and I can barely imagine the emotional components, so I bite my tongue and decide to just stay on the ridge. Claim ignorance. The secret to a great macaroni salad is plain yogurt, you need that bite.