Battle-worn, fungus-splotched,
tattered leaves are expressions of an ongoing, very messy but very beautiful
working-out of the Creator's ever-contending conservative and liberal impulses.
*****
CRACKING PECANS
For the last couple of months,
about twice a week I've been spending an hour or so in the afternoons cracking
pecans. Once I get a goodly number of pecan halves in my can I grind them into
meal with the butt of my hammer's handle. Later when I'm cooking my
cold-morning oatmeal porridge with its herbs and dribbled- in eggs I throw in a
handful of pecan meal. I find that the flavor of fresh pecan meal cooked in
porridge is much more robust than that of raw pecans.
I enjoy my pecan-cracking sessions,
and I regard that as a good sign. There have been periods in my life when my
mind was too unsettled and my spirit too distracted to really enjoy simple,
repetitive tasks. I think that two main changes in my life are responsible for
my present pecan-cracking tranquility.
First, at age 56, fewer hormones
are flowing in my body, so I no longer must deal with perpetual libidinal urges
to go find a woman. How I pity young people whose hormones rage through their
systems like mine used to, and older people who think they need to keep their
hormones stirred up. Anyone who decides that he or she wants no more children
-- or never wants them in the first place -- should have access to medicine that
neutralizes sexual hormones. What a shame that so much creative human energy is
so often distracted by the same impulses that give dogs in heat their general
character.
Second, at last I am mostly rid of
my addictions. When I was a kid on the Kentucky farm during the 50s and 60s, my
family picked up hickory nuts each fall, and during the winters we spent long,
contented hours cracking them. Then we got a TV. Soon we all craved junk food,
the newest gimmicks, and we wanted to be like people on TV. Many old traditions
ended, while our addictions to excess bore us all along as if we were leaves
adrift on a river. Now I am out of that river and no longer feel the need to
hustle to pay for my obsessions. The things I really like turn out to be very
inexpensive, or even free.
So, every morning when I taste that
wonderful pecan flavor in my steamy oatmeal porridge, and I feel the wholesome
pecan essence suffusing through my body, I am so thankful that now, at long
last, I can sit with a hammer and a rock and simply crack my pecans in peace.