08

Spinach salad and cherries and popcorn. And coffee, several cups of thick French pressed coffee with the organic milk from the refrigerator that we don’t need to turn on because it is cold enough in the boat to keep the eggs and spinach and milk at a chilly as not to spoil temperature. And the champagne from last night has a spoon resting in its neck to keep the bubbles. Today J finished off the cake with gooey chocolate sauce we nibbled on with our champagne as the ball dropped in Times Square miles away and fireworks exploded over the Chesapeake, reverberating down our mast.
Spinach and cherries and popcorn and coffee with milk throughout the day have made up my first few meals of the new year. What does that portend for 2008?
A long walk through the cobblestoned streets of Annapolis under a bluebird sky, wandering through neighborhoods with houses I admire but will never own and restaurants I will never try but nonetheless visually devour the menus on the frosty windows.
My head hurt with the cold and we retreated from the gusty wind, blue cloudless sky, and hilly green horizon; a similar description to the scenery surrounding us the first day of 2007, excepting a two dozen degree differential.
I can’t say where I’ll be on the next New Years Day. I can't say where I’ll be on the summer equinox or Halloween. It’s safe to say I will be somewhere warm in a week or two, but three or four?
I keep pretending to want to settle down. I tell everyone it is time. I elaborately construct the different solid lives I will lead in my head, complete with fireplace and cloth diapers and fulfilling job. But the giveaway for my make-believe domesticity should be the mention of apartments strewn throughout the world or the several months of vacation my job would afford to travel.
I love the unknown, crave it, grow bored without it, though I whine for a house and a routine: the unknown in a different light. Which is more frightening?
A new year, a new numeral defining my decade, where are the new thoughts and rumbling feelings?
Where will the wandering take me this time?
Where will I eat spinach and cherries and popcorn next new years day? Or rice and beans? Or dates and hummus? Or potatoes and beef? Or curry and dahl. Or sushi and seaweed salad?
Or is it an easy answer with my mom’s leftover pumpkin pie?