Wednesday, September 13, 2006

peanut butter, cucumbers, and flannel

It's almost that time of year when we sense a change in the air. We've had the first cool nights and hurricanes blow in the Atlantic.

I'm back home from sojourning around the country and find the taste of peanut butter wonderful. It doesn't take a lot to make me feel comfortable. I was listening to Bob Dylan's new "Modern Times" and the lyrics:


There's an evenin' haze settlin' over town
Starlight by the edge
of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak
Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory

Well, they just struck a chord as I thought about the taste of peanut butter. We're all going through changes and we can't stop them. We look back on some of the places we've been and feel a sweet contentment. OK sometimes we also feel a bit of uneasiness about choices we've made. But there is also a sadness that some of the oaths we took just didn't glow with supreme light the way we hoped they would. I guess that line about the place I loved being a sweet memory just echoed. Like the taste of peanut butter.

Cucumbers are on the vines. Misshapened. No long straight eights in my life. Little nubs of summer. But sliced with a bit of balsamic vinegar and fresh crack pepper they taste just great. The cucumber patch has become covered in more shade through the years. A real farmer would drop the trees shading the plot and convert them to firewood. I've left them up and they'll be dropping leaves soon. Leaf raking is a ritual but still not one I look forward to.

And this morning as I read the world news I realized that a flannel shirt would almost begin to feel comfortable. It doesn't take much to rock my world. A flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, and a cup of coffee as the sun rises. As the lyrics of Freebird stated so well so many years ago... "Lord knows, I can't change. Lord help me I can't change. Won't you fly freebird."