It’s windy today, a first on this trip. I walked the beach this morning, with blowing sand creating a moving layer, like the beach had its own troposphere hovering just above it. On my walk back, I was leaning into the wind, and in the far distance I saw an object tumbling toward me. A small man gave chase for a moment, but he quickly realized he was outmatched and resigned himself to a slow walk. Minutes later I intercepted it, a woman’s wide-brimmed sun hat, and a dutiful husband, now closer and much larger than me, said “you were my only hope.” I wish he had prefaced it with “Obi Wan…” but we can’t have it all.
Lots of people cleared out this morning, making way for the weekend crowd. My neighbor left before I woke up at 7:15, an elderly man and his wife who were very friendly. I kind of miss them. Even in that tiny departure, I feel a little pinch of sadness. I’m terribly sentimental. The forecast says rain later, but I’m hoping it’s wrong. I want to have a fire tonight.
Update: it’s raining. I’m spending a lot of time in the camper today.
One thing about temporarily living in a camper is that you can eat snacks in bed and not worry about crumbs. This is because of a couple reasons. 1) There are limited places to eat snacks in a camper: the small couch and the bed are about it in mine; and 2) Your bed is full of sand anyway (when camping near beaches), so some crumbs just add variety to the texture. I keep a pair of “house shoes” right inside my door, and I kick off my outdoor shoes as I come in, but it is basically pointless. You can either sweep a couple times a day or embrace the blending of two worlds: indoors and out, snacks and… whatever the opposite of a world without snacks is. Hell, maybe?
I don’t really eat salad, but I will regularly purchase a bag of croutons. I like the cheese and garlic croutons best. I’ve had about a bag a week since I left. They are pretty low calorie and kind of filling, and a much healthier snack than, say, Doritos. So in a way, I’m kind of eating salad, because it’s a fairly healthy alternative to Doritos and a lot of other snacks.
I was raised with meat as the main course and the side, and though I’ve tried to stray from this, I always come back to meat. Sometimes, if I haven’t eaten steak in awhile, I might see a cow and have an urge to run and tackle it, knock it unconscious and devour it right there in the field.
Sometimes I ask people what their last meal would be if they were on death row. This question can be slightly disconcerting to people, because why would they be on death row, and why have I been thinking about being on death row, are things they no doubt think about while also thinking about how to answer. But there’s really no other way to ask this question. You can’t ask, “what would you like as your last meal?” Because in truth, you won’t know what your last meal is. You may have just eaten it. And if you die of old age, you probably won’t be very hungry, your taste and other senses will have faded, and it just won’t apply. So that leaves death row. And I am greedy, so I always say that I would ask to have steak and salmon. And I’d like a glass of 2% milk to wash it down. The steak would be porterhouse, and the salmon would be chinook (otherwise known as king). No veggies. No sides. No dessert.
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