Ice & Fish

"I knew nothing about ice," the oceanographer said, the glaciologists lingering in her mind.

I too knew nothing about ice, or at least I disapproved of putting ice in white wine. In fact, once when I was a waitress, I deliberately ignored someone's gauche request for ice cubes to add to her Riedel of chardonnay. "Oh Lady, no you don't," I thought to myself.

But now that it's summer in Boston, and I'm waiting for my ceviche to cure, I sure as hell put ice in my vinho verde.

The oceanographer, my sister's roommate, just got back from a conference on melting.

I never even liked white wine until a year or two ago. I'm amazed now, standing on the cliff-edge of my 28th birthday, by the things one can cease to think one knows about, can make a judgment about, or can or cannot appreciate. I am amazed by lots of things these days, like the fact that lime can cook fish, for example. To say nothing of the anticucho that is currently my heart... But that's another story, one for a night of red wine and not white.

I went to Peru recently, by the way, and ate some amazing corn tamales, quinoa soup, seafood taca taca, alpaca tenderloin, alpine lake trout, and ceviche, washed down with plenty o' pisco sour. It was a lovely escape. Now back home, I'm making my own ceviche. Mostly so that I don't have to turn the stove on.

The cilantro is waiting like a bouquet to be added to the juicy mix of lime & tangerine juice, tomatoes, red onions, jalapenos (my hands are burning from cutting them), and sea salt, covering the local scallops and haddock my sister and I got this morning from our favorite seafood place "Alive & Kicking."

Conclusion? Look to oceanography, amazement and escape, awe as escape. Look too to coming back home to oneself, and to waiting for a meal to cook itself, slow as a glacier in summer, not so slow at all these days.