My Birthday

Today I am the age of the Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything!

And better still, tonight I will eat a lobster for dinner.

I do that every year, now.  Even though I prefer crab.  But lobster is so…so needlessly complicated, that I’ve decided to have one every year..because what in the hell are we all waiting for?  Is one lobster a year really going to knock us out?  HAVE ONE, Internet!  You only go around once in this life, for God’s sake!  A lobster a year is not going to break you!

Think I’ll have a couple of Okeover oyster shooters, too, just to warm up.  Yes, I think I just might.  Although I always feel like a mild idiot paying for the food I used to just pick up off the beach…I mean what’s next, paying for MUSSELS?!

Lobster, though;  you can’t get that, here.  You can get clams and oysters and mussels and cockles and geoducks (although I don’t care much for geoducks) and crab and ling cod and prawns and snapper and salmon, and my favorite-ever breakfast, fried grilse…mmmmm…we used to call them “trout”…

Boy, are those days gone…

Like the days of casually reeling in a great big coho, saumon argent as they call it in French…now, my favourite salmon of all time is the Spring (my Dad prefers the sockeye I think because that’s what he used to reef out of the stream by his house with a pitchfork, when it was spawning season), but as much as I like the Spring, and as much as my Dad likes the sockeye, neither of them is a patch on the coho in terms of sheer beauty — because when that coho comes out of the water, over the engine, and into the boat, Good Lord!  One is simply dazzled.  Coho grilse, is what we used to get.  Peppercorn crust…bit of lemon…mmmm…

Sorry, what was I saying?

Ah.  The ferocious coho.  Coho salmon.  Why you could hardly dip your paw into the water, when I was a boy, without bear-like coming up with a coho in your grasp.  I remember days when my brother and I used to race to see who could finish cleaning their coho first.  Rust and grease and green water, and the lovely feel of fish-guts in your hand.  Salt in the nose.  Automatic punk-rock hair.  Couple of cuts on the thumb.  Bit of tang.  Jokes about tetanus.  Being told you’re “in the bight, idiot”…

How I miss those days.

I’ll be off to them again, Internet, in just a few days, and not to return ’til the apples fall from the trees, and the ocean waters sting like cold blue bees…meantime I’ve been cooking up a couple big essays for you, and I’m not gone yet, and I still have to tell you about my Steve Gerber Explosion…though Sean Witzke and Harvey Jerkwater may tune out for that, as they know most of it already.  My, but it’s been an interesting two-and-a-half years!  Has it only been two-and-a-half years?  It’s been long enough that I’ve stopped marking my Blogoversaries, and now I’m into actual personal numbers.  For example, I am forty-two today.

Forty-two, and if I may be permitted to get maudlin for a moment, Internet…I’m disposed to think our relationship just may last.  Seriously, man;  I get a lot of good from you.  It feels so strange to say it, but…

I feel lucky.

Thanks for reading, writing, and linking.  I go back into the hammock (“the hive”, my Dad calls it) soon, pretty soon…but you never know, I may get a laptop one of these days.  Bees buzzing.  The sound of the linnet’s wings.  Soft breezes.  Lazy destinations.  Tap tap tap.

It could happen.

Okay, time for me to go to bed.  Just bought crisp new sheets;  gonna read a little Michael Chabon.  Maybe have a Popsicle for breakfast tomorrow.

Sky’s the limit.