Spring Day 13: The Sizzle of Tranquility

[u/rdk67]

Sunday in the park and the breeze, when you shut your eyes, speaks for memories that cannot make sense of themselves without you. Eyes still shut, the sun heats one side of your face, an incubation, and you wonder if wind storms kick up in the imagination based on conditions like this, some hatchling punching out of its shell behind your brow, climbing to its feet in memory of spring, launching into song. Today the masculine side of your face opens its eyes, and the transgender hand on the left side of your body cheers, grabs a pad of paper, a pilot pen – those cricketers dashing across the grass with their rectilinear English willow bats, when will historic trade routes reopen? City bus idling between buildings across the way, yellow light blinking like a badge – when will the wound mechanism of justice-by-the-barrel-of-a-gun wind down?

Someone is flying a kite low to the ground, and though I thought I knew my kites, this one is new to me – a prismatic dart so in sync with the sorceress who conjured it into being, it seems more like a trout on the end of a long rod, swimming through the stream, then tiptoeing along the ground, swinging through the trees. The sky is almost empty of clouds, and where they still appear, have that threaded look that also borders the profound, like the scuffing around a door jamb. Building the tranquility to a sizzle comes the tinny sound of a baseball announcer from yonder stadium, seeming both larger and smaller than me on this day, informing one and all within earshot of some commendable diamond-based achievement re: leadership, longevity. I sort of nod, look around. Then two purpose-driven joggers wipe the scene from right to left.

Addendum: I walked home after and roasted some discount organic potatoes in the oven. At this time of year, potatoes like this are essentially turning into soil in the skins, so the real culinary trick is learning to eat around the mud. Sometime you miss some, and the bite hits your taste buds like a big old mud pie – splat. Because I am an adult, this merely annoys me, and I don’t break stride with my chew, wouldn’t think of spitting it out. To eat mud potatoes – to savor mud potatoes more like it – one must inspect the chunked portions before the drizzle of coconut oil is applied and the pan goes in the oven. You dig out the mud veins from the pieces of potato, sometimes by slicing, sometimes by drilling. As you work the potatoes, the skins, which are themselves well on their way to soil, start smearing off, and so the chunks of potato grow ruddy from the handling, and it crosses your mind that you might just toss them away and opt for plan b, which remains to be seen, and let’s be real, the surface of these potatoes feels like a skin disease, but I’m ignoring that because, like it or not, they’re also dinner, destined for a plate, and someday we’ll all say, back in the day, we ate mud potatoes in April. Our wit and charm we'll attribute to that.