Thursday, December 11, 2008

Hard boiled egg induced reflections


"I wept as I remembered how often you and I had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky."
- Callimachus

A cabbage white butterfly lies peacefully in the gentle white snow.

Every morning I remember Paul Newman. Not just some mornings. Every morning -- faithfully!

And every morning Dada's editor-in-chief gets a hard boiled egg. It's while peeling his egg, and sometimes my own those days I join Sam, that I remember a character named Luke who downed 50 hard boiled eggs in one "sitting."

But today is different. While peeling two eggs my memory triggers melancholy. This morning it isn't just of a Cool Hand Luke or the good things accomplished with the proceeds from the sales of spaghetti sauce.

And as the vigorous aroma of a cracked hard boiled egg fills the air I suspect my pensive reflections are from an encounter last weekend when, while in the backyard, a small butterfly passed by. It was one of my favorites, a cabbage white. Sadly I paused to watch, remembering just a month or so earlier another cabbage white I'd seen frolicking with its partner, sometimes together in carefree flight of downward tumbling spirals I could only interpret as a dance of elation just to be together, to be alive.

Autumn's warmth had provided another sunny day as the sweet nectar of lantana blosoms in their waning moments hosted a very well attended end-of-the-season garden party for all.

But now the lantanas are gone, just as the partner of this lonely white cabbage is eerily absent. The carefree joy of flight in the blitheness of late October days has now been replaced by the urgency of early December.

This morning, with frost on the ground, the smell of a hard boiled egg brings a reverie that transcends the usual Paul Newman induced smile. Today I'm contemplating the grander aspects of life. And of its inevitable end.

And I'm remembering the tragedies that so often overshadow the dances of elation just living enables some to appreciate. And, oh yes, the good things that can sometimes be accomplished with the proceeds from the sales of spaghetti sauce.

*****

2 comments:

PTCruiser said...

No man can eat 50 eggs.

Dada said...

Yeh, I guess that's what made Cool Hand Luke a legend, huh?