Beauty and Surprise

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Beauty is why I live here; I can't thrive without it. While living in a basement, with a job in a basement, and getting back and forth on the subway, I subsisted on books and pictures, and in other unpromising circumstances clung to the glitter of junk jewelry or a worn-out cassette tape in my Sony Walkman playing and replaying The Mamas and the Papas, or Mozart as performed by St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. I lived in and left cities with little to no beauty, or none I could see; I didn't live in the areas with views, vistas, or charm. Over a long period of time this taught me to look for beauty in the smallest things and unlikely places.

I didn't know it, but I was starved for surprises and gifts as well as beauty. I went to work, paid rent. My weekly budget left me $6 in disposable income. Walking neighborhood streets for exercise, I did not look at people, or houses, or to the right or left; these were cities in which if you did that they called the police, believing you were casing their houses.

For the past seven days here the sun did not show. Still, the weather was reasonably mild and I shuffled through the gray woods, with no birds in them, my eye catching on nothing but boring beige-ish inedible parasitic-on-deadwood fungi that all looked alike until I turned them over and saw they had wonderful petticoats.

Free Chives

Last night the Arctic winds howled as I have never heard them. They tore some of the plastic off the windows and shredded it. They kept me awake. They forced the temperature way down. A human being can do nothing except think about hot soup, a favorite soup. With a sandwich if possible.

I chose the simple recipe "Shrimp Soup DeLuxe" from Twelve

Months of Monastery Soups. Fresh chopped onion, olive oil, shrimp, some dry white wine, white pepper, a bit of milk. . . and a half cup of mixed fresh herbs as the final touch. Fresh herbs in January? Yes! On a slope near the lane, hidden just inside the woods, clumps of chives grow every winter. I don't know where they came from, or why, because they grow nowhere else on the property, but they come in very handy. I cheated and went out and bought parsley for the soup, too. But the chives were free.

Slice of Heaven Bakery

While passing by I saw this bakery in Valley Park, MO, and thought, "Why pass it by?" So I went in and it was the old-fashioned kind of bakery that doesn't serve $8 paninis. Decades had passed since I was last in a normal pastry bakery like this one. They had St. Louis Cardinals cookies (I guess we're in the World Series), kolaches, danishes, cakes, brownies, cupcakes, turnovers, doughnuts, and chocolate-covered Oreos, to name a few. I could have only one slice of heaven so selected a cannoli, a dessert I can't make in my own kitchen. They gave it to me in a small white box with a cellophane insert, just like a piece of jewelry in a presentation box. I am so glad I did not simply pass by.

On Having Things Nice

Live alone and you've got to have some items or rituals that quietly and secretly give you reliable pleasure. I like tea first thing in the morning, and I like coffee cups/teacups of thick old restaurant china to be the first things I handle and see. They are comforting and fortifying. (To me, "mugs" even sound barbaric.) While living in Syracuse, NY, I visited the factory store of Syracuse China Company and bought for .50 each eight random restaurant coffee cups from a "seconds" bin, and 20 years later, while the factory is no more, I still cherish the surviving five and the three replacements from eBay, such as the one above, known to be a pattern from 1967. It's in a random saucer because while a restaurant coffee cup is comfort, a cup with a saucer is life.

It's not about "having nice things." Things don't have to be fragile or expensive to be nice. Don't deny yourself just because you aren't wealthy or because no one sees or cares but you. If you've always wanted a jackknife with a fishing scene carved on its handle, or a thermos with the Scotch-plaid pattern on it, a rosemary bush, a gingham tablecloth, if it will gladden you every time you see it, get it. Love it. Any love is good love.

How Not to Hate November

1. Remember it is only 8 weeks until the days start getting longer.
2. There's Thanksgiving.
3. It's a good month to sit in a nook and write poetry. It's also National Novel-Writing Month.
4. November -- after deer season begins -- is the month to wear that awful orange sweater.
5. Flannel sheets on the bed; flannel pajamas; don't they feel nice?
6. Those south-facing windows get more sun.
7. The constellations Taurus and Orion, with their spectacular stellar phenomena, rise soon after sunset.
8. You can see the birds' nests in the trees, and if they're in low branches you can even collect some.
9. The sun is so low in arc that the bare trees cast fantastic shadows even in the daytime (see above).
10. The weather is great for soup-making and baking.

Beer: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

This isn't a native Missouri beer, but us all down here like a cold one no matter what the label on it, and the advertising folks seem to know that in the Show-Me State you show us a beer and we'll drink it, and they seem to be appealing to us and our kind, and you know what? It's time for my weekly Sunday morning beer.

Keep Those Home Fries Burning

Salivate over the potato-and-egg salad that could be made outa these, or red-potato home fries that will make your friends get up and kiss you without even takin off the napkin from around their necks.

Delighted to see fresh produce, including zucchini, now available from a place not far from here that's a cross between a garden and a farm field, and bought these little gems -- averaging about ping-pong ball size -- for their blushing beauty and of course to think of a hundred decadent ways to cook them.

Demetrius grew these in his garden. Potatoes are mysterious and I had no idea when they'd be ready to dig, but he knew, and I helped him harvest his little red edible gems that began their growth in clusters, kind of like grapes underground. While spading them up you can't help but scar some of them, but I was so bewitched that I turned every inch of earth around there to get 'em all, backache or no backache. This year at the "honor" vegetable stand (where you leave your money on a table next to the road) these were 2 lbs for $2.

Crocuses, OMG!

Beyond all mundane pleasures this world has to offer -- the miracle of spring. These showed up in a neglected area of lawn. OMG! My favorite flowers! I bowed down and worshipped! And just had to share them with you.

What's Biting Today?

I fished today. At the local Shell I asked where I could buy bait. “You’re in the right place,” said the clerk, and sold me 2 dozen night crawlers $2.99/dozen. “I hope you catch a load,” she said, “and I don’t mean coal.”

So I get to the Big River (that's its name), dazzled & stupefied with the joy of first-fishing-of-the-year. About 60% of the time spent untangling, retying, cussing, getting hook out of bushes, etc. Thunder in the distance. An angler across the river caught a catfish. I want one. I won’t leave. Finally, God lets my old folding chair’s nylon seat rip in half, suddenly dumping my ass full-force on wet sand. I only hoped nobody saw this, because I bet it looked hilarious. Took this as a divine signal to go home.