Sausages and scrambled eggs

On dying

“Daybreak” by Louis” Servedio Morales

I’m scared of my own death I think, because it’s heartbreaking if I think that the story stops and just vanishes, so to speak, and I’ve never really had a grasp on my story in the first place, I’ve just had pieces of it in my hands, and I’m always trying to put together a full picture, but with the years the plot falls through me and I forget parts, and I don’t really want to think about that any more I think, because this is always the way it goes, yeah, I try to think about where it’s all going and I get in a panic so I stop trying to see the entire thing and then it’s back to square one, isn’t it, but sometimes I don’t care much about the story when I think about something beautiful like comfy socks, and I’m staring at the ocean and I feel better because it’s so simple and constant, the way the ocean moves, and I suppose everything in life has a simplicity like the ocean if you really think about it, because the ocean doesn’t have any purpose and that’s just like us, really, and I think about the sausages I ate for lunch with scrambled eggs the way my friend Jack cooks them, and I really like how he cooks scrambled eggs so I made him teach me the recipe, the secret is to cook them very slowly and to take them off the heat before you think they have cooked, that’s it really, and to add a tiny bit of milk and salt, and I didn’t think I was particularly hungry but then I ate three big sausages and a whole plate of scrambled eggs so I suppose I must have been hungry after all, and I don’t really know what a day is supposed to be about, or what a week is supposed to be about, if it’s not about enjoying your sausages and a good pair of socks, but then I always get scared about where it’s all going, and I don’t know how to spend the rest of my life but I don’t want to think about that right now, and I see Georgi sitting across from me in the beer garden and I say tell me your life story in four minutes, I’ll set a timer for four minutes and you just go, it’s from the New York Times, and she says well I don’t know what to say, and I say well just start with when you were little and see what comes out / you can talk about anything really, and then I hear an enormous sound like a whale song and I’m looking out at the ocean again because I’m sure that sounded like a whale, but that can’t be right, and the middle part of the bay is beginning to dimple with raindrops but not the part closest to me, it’s as if the cloud is only covering part of the ocean, yeah, which is strange, I think, and there’s a seagull flying low over the water and I remember Mea telling me that they eat seagulls in Norway, and I said Seagulls? Yes she said and there is a small brown bird they eat and I forget the name but it’s quite a delicacy here and then I realise it’s not raindrops causing the dimples on the ocean, it’s fish, there are tiny fish jumping from the water, does that mean a whale is coming and scaring the little fish I think, and I stand up and walk closer to the window and a seagull flies straight down into the water to grab one of the fish and I think wow what a thing and now there are lots of birds arriving and there’s practically too many fish to choose from I think, and I reach down to the table and take my coffee mug and I feel from the handle it is very cold and I think I really must stop worrying so much about death all the time, yes and I look down at the bay and all of the dimples have disappeared, so the whale must have gone I think, and now it’s completely still apart from the spread of the wind on the water and I sit in my chair and put down my cup of coffee and think well that’s that then isn’t it