The Bird is Already Here

Today I will shop for groceries.  Today I will get some chopping and cooking done ahead of time.  Today I have managed to push back the work world.  The American clients understand.  The rest of the world doesn’t but I’m going to treat the next two days as if they were a holiday. 

The bird is already here.  I’d fretted as I’d only remembered to ask for one just last weekend.  The bald guy with the earnest eyes from the market called me back and said he had one that was, (after doing the kilogram conversion,) was only about five pounds.  It sounded like a grouse.  I implored him to find me something bigger.  If you wait too long though you’re left with slim pickings.  Last year they had brought in these strange Chilean turkeys, which seemed OK until you reached inside and found that they hadn’t included the neck and organs.  No gravy that year.

A call came from a strange number and just as I was about hang up, expecting to be propositioned for a loan, he said the world “fire bird.”  Ah yes, cool.  How big?  Really?  Great.  Yeah.  Can you deliver it tomorrow? The eight-pound bird arrived today.  I’m wouldn’t consider myself strongly disposed towards “America First” as a product filter but I was glad that this bird came from Utah and not Santiago.  I’d stored it in the garage and today I’ve got it out on the counter, thawing. 

I was listening to Wagner as I had been writing about Wagner and I then got tired of Wagner so I made my way to Mahler, whom I prefer.  I’m not sure why it fit the day but I had Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler’s 9^th very loud for a first and then a second listening.  He’s writing a symphony about death.  The autumn sky was a rare, lacerating blue and I suddenly wanted to go for a walk.  I wanted to just throw aside the preparation I had to do and the work I needed to get done and play like a child in whatever nature I could access, here in suburban Beijing.  We’ll pick up that theme some other day, I'm afraid.

Later that night my younger one and I each baked a pie.  She followed a walnut pie recipe.  I figured I’d wing it with a blue berry pie to complement.  I turned down the Mahler so we could watch “The Two Towers”, which she was playing on her laptop and which seemed similarly ominous.  We rolled out the dough and took to fitting it in our pie tins.  We’d cut them a bit short so there was no room on the edges for those Betty Crocker ridges your supposed to pinch in.  But there was left over dough for meshing across the top.  Hers looked like a proper pie.  I’d cooked my blueberries longer than I should have.  I got caught up in Saruman’s stubborn speech until Grima Wormtongue stabs him and puts a stop to it.  I poured a blueberry soup into the crust.  The dough drapes I set atop began to sink within the indigo pool and become discolored.  It didn’t matter.  She knew how long to leave hers in for and here, and I, finally, followed someone’s instructions.

Wednesday, 11/22/17