Day 639: Avocado-Pregnant

If there were the slightest chance I might be pregnant, I would think I was. There is none. Today, I spent many minutes, almost to the point of hours, thinking about avocados. I squeezed a few, wondering if my one at home could be ripe yet. Once home I ate it, slice by slice, removing it gently from its stone in circles. Like a 1960s mobile or a Habitat lampshade, thin green rounds. Yes, it was bland. Yes, it was creamy. No, nothing else would do. This might sound like nothing to avocado fans, but my world is rocked.

When I was 15, 16, and with my first boyfriend (he was in the sixth form! I thought I'd made it!), a friend of his was off at medical school. He was a talker and a charmer and he liked to weave a tale. The tale he told that's stayed with me so long was this: upon the occasion of his first cadaver dissection, he was nervous. He prepared himself, leant close and let the scalpel slide into the corpse's cold torso. As he did, a globule of cold fat from around the hip flipped up and landed in his mouth, or on his lip. It made it in, whatever. A dead body's fat cells, in his mouth. It's unfeasible at best. Even at the time, I felt it hadn't happened, but I was compelled and morbidly fascinated. And until now, every time I've eaten avocado, the memory of that cold, lardy, unwelcome human fat deposit slipping on my lips and tainting me has returned.

And now I'm caning avocado slices like pringles, or slipping them in salads. Half an avocado a day, on average. Not excessive in itself, but very strange. The sensation is the same - the slightly clammy cold of them, the lack of distinctness in the flavour, the gentle mush of flesh. 

Two things of particular note today, both previously tipped: the cello and the pond. Not in that order. The pond - I "didn't have time" again today, having got out of my warmest of beds a little later than I planned. There was no not doing it today, though. It had snowed. I'm not sure if I've been in snow before. Maybe I have. It never gets tired, though. The water was at its first official zero of the year. There are rumours of the thermometer being off - it's been stuck at 3.5 for weeks, despite tangible temperature changes on the skin.The skin can lie, though, and the air temperature plays havoc with perception, as do wind and rain and biorhythms (if such things still exist). 

I was busy feeling cold, noticing the pricking at my limbs and the cold grip around my throat, feeling the holding of the water, yearning towards the ice, when I looked up and saw snow sitting along branches, making beauty. That's a better thing to notice, as far as experience goes. A coating on the life ring. 

There was a cormorant with a speckledy white head, crooning and necking up, awkwardly beautiful and totally compelling to watch. He was standing on a life ring and plopping in from time to time. They can be sleek, those birds, but this one wasn't. Like a puppy growing into its feet, or a teenage boy with his first gelled hair. I loved him instantly.

My cello lesson made me joyful. There was ease in it. Ease in the shoulders. Fascination in the hands. And the beautiful caress of the notes when richly played. I was a tiny bit late, having run (awkwardly, with a cello on my back) up behind two departing buses on the way there, so I got to hear him play. I always loved that with my other teacher too. They play so beautifully, these cello men. They have such body passion in it. 


Thanks, Goddess Sturrock, for being very good at what you do. Thanks, Greg, for making me soup in time for when I got home, so I could spoon some in my face before my call. Thanks for a little bit of work I wasn't expecting. Thanks for lovely Ruths.