“April is the cruellest month.”

I’ve always wanted to cite that famous line.  When I first read The Waste Land back in college, that line meant very little to me. How could it? Only with maturity, disappointment, and solitude can one truly understand Eliot’s words.

Here I am, just back from the city that’s home to a hopeful, beautiful President and endless Japanese maple trees. And now, I live in the 305, finally liberated from the awful, fascistic conformity of office culture.

But something has gone awry. I know things will get better but in the springtime, when fecundity rules, that offers little comfort.  It’s the contrast between the internal and the external, I suppose.

Tonight, on the eve of the last day of April, I took stock of what got me through the day: the Rolling Stones, my friends and family, the New York Times, and Leila’s face.

And food.  But food that’s pure and simple.

In today’s Times, I read about a daughter and mother-in-law who trekked up to the Hood Canal in Washington State to gather shellfish.  They mastered the technique by listening to and observing working people who learned it from their parents.  It’s something that’s done all over the world, every day.   But it may not be there forever.

On most days, we should fight to preserve such a tradition. Yet on some days, there will be no fighting. Just the earth, sea, and food:

Back at Alderbrook, we hurried to the dock just in time for sunset. As we prepared a little makeshift picnic, ospreys and bald eagles soared overhead, and silvery schools of baitfish burbled below. With a toast to the Olympic Mountains in the distance, we tipped oysters into our mouths and tasted the luxuriantly round, salty flavor of the sea.

Shantih shantih shantih