(originally posted 4/30/23)

Nothing like spending the better part of an April morning sitting on a porch basking in the sun, cracking open pistachios, & taking in the spectacular blue sky.

As the pile of shells grew ever larger, I found myself imagining one story after the other involving pistachios . . . using them as metaphors, historical references, farm settings, jokes, threads, a MacGuffin, or some other plot device. Maybe a character has an allergy to pistachios or an obsession with pistachio ice cream that proves to be their Achilles' heel or . . .

But leave it to a three-year-old to enter the scene & start covering my fingertips with the half shells & laughing uproariously about how silly my hands look.

I was reminded of an account I'd heard—probably apocryphal, but one I like all the same—of a woman slamming her hand down in front of her writer husband during a family meal in the midst of one of his common reveries & shouting, "Damn it, stop writing this instant."

There's a part of me that likes to channel her resolve whenever I suffer from what I see as the only thorn of my writer's existence—being distracted from living in the moment. Not exactly the most enlightened of mindful techniques, I realize, but it works when most others fail.

Anyway, the moment is at hand to open that jar of pistachios for my daily afternoon allotment.

Till next time,

Drew
Drew Faraday
Pearl Fields and the Oregon Meltdown