It’s a shockingly beautiful day, here in Maine. It’s been in the forties since I woke up, at eight o’clock, and while there are still stubborn globs of snow slopped on the street corners and the edges of the parking lots, the remnants of the nor’easter that effectively shut the city down for two days are running down the street and dripping from the eaves, the songbirds returned to sing the sluice away down the drains.
The last snowstorm was a bad one. I haven’t seen anything like it since my childhood in the Keweenaw: nearly 24 inches in a single night, with winds whipping, sometimes, into the 50s. Bird and I were down in Connecticut with our friends John and Kasey Scheibe when it came sweeping in up the coast: they rented a charming little cabin in the woods for a late-winter weekend getaway for the four of us. We don’t see enough of each other, not nearly; I hadn’t seen them since I married them, last October.
We drank excellent bourbon and strong craft sours. We are Red Beans and Rice and cooked garlicky soups and garlicky breakfast potatoes, stacks of pancakes and pizzas heavy enough with chicken and bacon to bend in your hand. We fried a whole loaf of bread into grilled cheese. Trinity barked at horses, we failed to see either a lunar eclipse or its miraculous, accompanying comet, and laughed more than any near neighbors could have appreciated. We sweated the whiskey out in a midnight sauna. We played Cards Against Humanity (the last time I played Cards with Kasey, we drank vodka until I couldn’t keep playing, because I had lost to ability to read, and, a little later, to think to the end of a sentence) and a strategy board game called Catan, which we enjoyed so much that, rushing through the slush of New Hampshire for the safety of our little apartment, fat, wet sleet clotting under our wipers, Bird called our local comic shop and made them hold us a copy of the game, which we picked up half an hour before Biddeford was buried. We played Catan and ate Ben and Jerry’s through the night as windows rattled in their panes and cars collided in the intersection under our window.
It was an amazing vacation, with amazing people.
Now I’m back in Biddeford, slowly getting ready to move back to Michigan. I haven’t really written in a while, but I have today off. The window by the kitchen table is open and the smell of the melt and the newborn earth mingles with the touch of cream and honey in my tea. (Earl Grey, hot, in honor of Captain Picard. Bird and I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I haven’t seen since I was young; in this current climate of anti-intellectualism, it’s wonderful to watch a show about scientists and explorers, a show which espouses the virtues in wonder and knowledge and discovery. All that aside, it’s great science fiction, and it’s on Netflix.)
Tom Waits is crooning like smooth, cancerous thunder from the record player in the corner of the apartment. Earlier this morning, I spun Earth 2. Listening to the fuzzy, polyphonic drone, Bird turned to me and said, “You know, I think you might be the strangest person I know.”
“Why’s that?”
She shrugged. “Just your musical tastes. It’s all so weird. I like it, though. It’s something I love about you. And I like this album. It’s just...” She kissed me. “It’s just weird.”
It made me feel better than I’ve felt in days. Eventually, she always helps me back into my head.
When Tom Waits (Real Gone, one of the first vinyl records in my collection) is done, I’m going to spin Sleep’s Dopesmoker. However Bird enjoys the oddity of my musical tastes, our new roommates do not, so I’m getting it out of my system today. (And there’s always headphones.)
Now. I have a podcast to cut and post, and writing to do.
I miss you, whoever you are, reading this, and hope your day is as lovely as the one I’ve found myself in today.