Public Opinion

There's this cute, young, anorexic woman working in the produce section of Kroger. We chat about vegetables. I was examining some very nice eggplants, and she asked me what I did with them. I mentioned a couple of things and she said I sounded like a cook. She had a break and I bought her a coffee at the in-house Starbucks. She's gay, and we had a funny conversation about gay couples in which neither of them had ever learned to cook, in which the Family Meal from KFC was pretty much the bar. I don't pretend to much, and I'm done with the cares of society. But I do feel that the bar should be set higher than that. I had my weekly dozen oysters and resolved to make a stew. A simple and quick dish. I've done this so many times that I don't even think about it. Like watching my mother make biscuits, which was unbelievable because she only measured by hand and eye, and they were always perfect. To do anything well is a testament. Rodney showed up (he needed the rest of his money) and there's a great stack of wood in the shed. Neatly stacked. I feel surprisingly fine about this: a full larder, some firewood, the driveway in decent shape. When people ask me what I do with my time I have to laugh. One thing, I usually say, leads to another. I'd left a note for myself, to research the word 'petrichor', which is the smell of rain on parched earth, and that lead to research into certain watersheds, and that led to what you call a thin cake of baked cornmeal. I have to take a walk to clear my head. Now that the leaves are mostly gone, I see different things, oak galls, and where damaged branches have healed. It's the... what? Ongoing internal conversation? Waiting in line to buy some groceries, being slightly paranoid, I can't wait to get out of the funnel. Caught between breathe mints and scandalous mags. The natural world, teasel, say, at the verge, where two roads cross, is much better than being caught in the line at Kroger. Coming home it's so lovely across the river, in Kentucky, that I drive the long way around, then all the way up the creek, literally all the way, since the creek starts at my hollow. The working title for the ridge book seems to be "Low-Gap Hollow" as that's the way I refer to it when I talk to the two or three people I talk to about it. Observations and reflections on things that usually remind me of other things. I like the way the text jumps from subject to subject, which reflects the way I think, and I've spent a lot of time cutting out connective tissue; though in truth I haven't worked on it much for the last couple of months, getting ready for winter. But I am almost ready for winter. Wednesday I'll have the money for the new used fridge and I'll be able to freeze a few things, some salt-pork, a tenderloin, a couple of steaks. When I do have to walk in, all I'll have to carry are some greens and maybe a couple of parsnips. Young turnips, cooked with their greens, are very good. Joel, ever the realist, thought I might be wandering afield, but we agreed on certain food-writers. John Thorne is the best.