...in my morning ritual, thirty-two ounces of water and two teaspoons of sea salt warmed and drunk as quickly as possible. Today was the last day I have to do that for a while.Salt-white makes me thing of New Mexico, of a trip my family took to see the White Sands National Monument. My father went back there when he and my mother were going through their most difficult period. He brought back souvenirs two weeks later, from King Tut's tomb. He said he had only been to White Sands but I didn't believe him. There were no pyramids, no unearthed pharaohs when we were there. He brought me a lucite pyramid with an image of a sphinx inside. I loved it, loved how it felt, the sharp, clear point.
Salt water makes me think of Galveston, a nasty beach. Even South Padre is nasty; all of that part of the Gulf is disgusting, covered in seaweed and jellyfish and even residue of oil spills sometimes, dead fish like coal miners. Sad, sick, some not dead yet.
When I was young my uncle took me to Galveston for the first time. He was always taking me places for the first time, exposing me to new things. He got second degree burns -- maybe some third degree burns as well -- lying out on the beach all day. He was red like a boiled lobster and spent the next day sick in bed in the hotel room, the air conditioner cranked too high.
I came back from that trip with a coconut carved out to look like some kind of a boogie man. My uncle always blew a lot of money on me, unnecessary things, anything I wanted. I loved him more than my father because he took me with him, let me pick out my own souvenirs.
He took me to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. My mother made him take my sisters, too. He couldn't play such favoritism for one of her three children. Bummer! All that salt-white snow and I had to share it with them! But we had a good time anyway, cross-country skiing and making fools of ourselves on the side of the mountain.
Cocaine is as white but much finer. I did a lot of that with my uncle, too. He had a toupee at the time -- and still the good job -- and his hairdresser also had a coke habit and he turned my uncle onto it and the next thing we knew we were all getting high on the stuff. He never smoked pot though because the fear of that had been so firmly planted in him by his middle class religious family. The gateway drug!
Salt. I had a bowl of broth tonight. Steven made it for me, vegetables with a little cayenne and two pinches of salt. I only allowed myself to eat a few of the vegetables because I'm breaking a fast and I want to do it right.
