today

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I know it. Anticipation. 
 
That thought sends me straight to cookbooks to find these Nigel Slater sentences:
 
"…the feel of the peach's soft fuzz on first my upper and then my lower lip, the way the skin puckers as I bite, a teasing prelude to the sweet flesh that will follow. And all this before the juice — sweet, cool, sensuous — even touches my tongue."
 
I want to associate taste with varietals where the need to travel is not imperative. In southern Ontario local could mean eating a peach called Harrow, Garnet Beauty, Redhaven, or Vivid. The names of starlets at central casting.
 
Calling them peaches is like calling us humans. Why don't we all know the varietal at all the stores? What's the commercial benefit of a generic identity? How hard is it for fruit growers to flip the consumer switch? 
 
I'm eating organic Saugeen Country yogourt and Ontario peaches for breakfast. Lux over here. 
 
***
 
My blinds are down, and I've been fantasizing about Italian marble floors. Sitting in front of a fan, listening to air conditioners, traffic, and global climate news. A big jar of lemon ice water is sweating into a puddle on a coaster. Outside it's gem lettuce and fava bean green with hollyhocks and sweet peas.
 
How does an increase in rain affect an orchard, long-term? Are we scrambling or prepared?
 
***
 
It began with the stories I read in Creem and Hit Parade as a teen. Rock and roll journalism is way up there for me, On tier 'crème Chantilly.'
 
This podcast — The True Story of The Fake Zombies — is special. What a story...and teller. It's high on craft.    
 
There's nostalgia in it, too. It's a reminder of 11-year-old me living in a new town on Lake Huron where the taste of isolation was metallic. A place hard on a tender spirit. A night DJ led me toward Detroit, glittering on the choppy cuttlefish ink water. Bob Seger and Motown walking me toward sleep. A music city on the Detroit River.

I had some high quality lake boat talk tonight with an uncle — always a pleasure. He and Harry passed through Detroit often. Probably Theo, too. 
 
Here's to The Zombies. Colin Blunstone's voice and Rod Argent on keyboards. I went looking for covers and fell for this one.  

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1968

2021