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 using them as metaphors, historical references, farm settings, jokes, threads, a MacGuffin, or some other plot device.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
