Natural Sounds

I love the outdoors. Generally, a day alone on the ridge, I'll hear from 0 to 6 sounds that are not natural sounds of nature, maybe a train over in Kentucky, maybe a loud car or truck on the road below, maybe a helicopter looking for illicit crops. Awakened this morning by a wall of sound, rolled over on my back, coming to my senses, the windows open wide, it is cicadas, maybe 75 decibels. When I go out to sling-blade I wear ear-plugs. It's an assault to hearing, like that big cage of monkeys at the Cincy Zoo. Back inside I listen to Bach on low volume and try to read. Can't listen to music and read, but I can read and listen to weekend NPR, so do. Mid-afternoon I start cooking. Caramelize a couple of onions, red pepper, celery, add a can of very good roasted and skinned tomatoes (organic, expensive, but terrific flavor) let it cook down. Lots of flat-leaf parsley at the end. Slice, salt, sweat, wipe and fry eggplant slices dipped in corn flour, the marinara on top. This is a meal that makes you remember past lovers and weep silently, tears dripping onto your plate. I just had bread and a small salad with it, usually there would be a meat, pork tenderloin or a small steak, drizzled with old, thick, balsamic. A big rich dense meal, haven't had one in a while, and I drank the last Ridge Zin, the only wine up to the task, that Glenn had brought, when he was shooting footage of us finding and collecting wrack for the show. Perfect combination, a meal like that needs a wine that can scour the inside of your mouth. A meal can be an easy conceit. A friend from Cape Cod, friend is too strong, a guy I worked with, Juan. The infamous Juan Of The Two Beauties, we were at Janitor College, overlapping, he was a great cook, seduced many women with his cooking, but had the advantage of being rich. His father owned a South American country and had sent him away for safe keeping, he could fly girlfriends up. The rest of us were reduced to northern milk-maids, they had good hands, god bless them. So easy to get sidetracked. BUT Juan was the first person to ever explain to me the connection between a really good dinner and sex, that it was a doable thing, I took up cooking right away. I'm sure I was going somewhere with that. Sure, it came out in court that I knew nothing, when Juan was shot 42 times outside the Hilton my reputation suffered. Hard not to be offended, when they don't shoot you, but thrilled, you know, to be alive. Call attention to that. Note to self : who knows what. Basho, 1688, spring:

so lazy
finally roused from bed:
spring rain.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhh'TV thought, I mesa, want you might hazard said whatever.A butte, a landform, something. Did you see that?."What is said.