A Good Clamming Knife

A blue scrotal blue sky swaddled between bloated white globular clouds. No sky no blue sky no blue scrotal blue sky. These things troubled the man in the hat as they counted for nothing, and even were they to count for something, anything, it would surely be something not worth counting for. In this manner he felt he could count on nothing, not even his own thoughts. Were he to count on them, his thoughts, he’d have to satisfy far too many variables, and variables were a nuisance and not worth the bother, even were they to recount themselves and relieve him of counting on counting that was bothersome and tricky. Life is like a potato field, all those black eyes staring at you, a field’s worth of black staring out of focus eyes, a mercenary of them, eyes. Whenever he felt stranger than strange the man in the hat made himself an oyster sandwich. After shucking the oyster, which took some time, patience and a good clamming knife, the man in the hat would pound the shucked oysters flat with a wooden mallet, fold the flattened oysters in quarters and press them between two slices of black pumpernickel bread, thinly sliced and slightly toasted. When he felt odder than odd, which occurred on even days and near the end of the month, he would add a dollop of Gibb’s hard mustard to heavy cream, whisk it into a placental mash and eat it with a fork.