Alone Again, Naturally

Okay, so for the second time since I've been back I'm alone tonight. Chepa and the kids might surprise me with a visit for some watermelon and grapes but I'm pretty much alone. And while I was alone all day--except for bringing the kids donuts this morning and visiting them for a little while to see poor Madeleina after her first marching band practice practically dead on Chepa's sofa--Dad, when you make a mistake you have to do 20 pushups and I can't even do one!--well, I've been alone all day. Which meant I got a story done for the Fort Worth Weekly and nearly finished my column for Skunk magazine as well. Extra cool.
Lonesome, but cool.
Did get a reasonably nice check in the mail--which comes promptly between 4 and 5 PM daily--from the June sales of my book at Amazon. Nice to know it's still selling 100+ copies a month, which is pretty much what it's done since it came out last year. I would love it to go wild and sell 50,000 copies one month but still, some people are reading it. And lots of those people write me. I've got a lot of super excellent letters from strangers who found it a great read. Good. That's what I was hoping for.
Here's a story: When I was a fairly young teenager I was writing a lot of poetry--oh, the angst of youth and pimples, blue balls brought on by necking with Kathy O for hours and never being allowed to go further, and not knowing there was an end to masturbating until I'd actually had real sex with a girl--some of which I'd read to my mom. And my mom, pretty astute lady, would ask me what this or that line meant. And I'd explain. And then she'd say--and we probably did this half-a-dozen times over the years--"Well, are you going to explain that to everyone who reads your poetry? Because if you are, you won't have a lot of readers, it'll just take too long. So why don't you say what you just told me in the poem in a way that I and others can understand? Then you can sell your work to lots of people and not worry about having to go to their homes to explain it."
I hated her the first time she said that. It was so cold, so cruel, so on the money.
When I grew up I gave up poetry but always write so that everybody knows that the heck I'm talking about. I think. Or I hope. Or that's what I try to do, anyway.
And so I think even people who don't know about ayahuasca could have a reasonable change of reading my book and getting something from it, just like people who come on my trips to the Amazon and don't drink ayahuasca or do the Matses' medicines sapo and nu-nu still get a lot out of the trips.
(QUICK AD: Upcoming trips in January and February, then again in June and July. Sign up now cause I'm gonna sell out to excellent people! ALSO: Time to stock up on the book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming for your early Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa/Tribal Solstice presents).
Anyway, so I'm alone. But I did good and pulled the trigger on Madeleina's new flute. It is a beauty: a floor model from Taylor Music in South Dakota--from Geimenhardt, supposedly a good flute maker. it's open-hole with a B foot and a Gizmo key and comes with corks for the open holes. None of which makes sense to be but makes it easier to swallow the $895 price tag--which is a freaking bargain from the $1350 or so it sells for completely new.
I'm just thinking of my friend Phoenix, whose father bought him a cheap little guitar when he wanted to play and told him to learn enough to earn something better. Phoenix plays beautifull and so I suspect his dad was happy to shell out the bucks for something that could make his kid's music sing. I feel the same way about Madeleina. She's spent hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing, learning, and now needs to move up from a beginner's flute. Good for her. She earned it with her practice and she also earned it working with me in Peru for nearly two months. So I bought it with a thrill running up my neck rather than a knot in my stomach.
I'm getting distracted thinking of the tiny new potatoes I have on the stove. I better go check them.
They look fine. I'm cooking them in water left from cooking asparagus and then spinach. It's got real good sea salt in it, and a little garlic oil (the garlic has been soaking in the olive oil for 48 hours) a bit of chicken stock from chicken last night and then a few sprigs of cilantro. They're gonna be good boiled potatoes.
And I'm still in love with sword fish so I've got a piece of it--sorry fish. I won't complain if one of your brothers eats me. I know it will hurt but I will deserve it--in a bit of the same garlic oil. It's nice and low right now. And then, probably boring you who know the damned recipe, when it's browned on one side and nearly done on the other, I'm gonna add garlic, tiny diced red pepper (half a pepper as I'm dining alone), three diced slices of red onion, and half a tiny bottle of capers, with the juice. Maybe a teaspoon of butter to bind it all together.
The sides are maybe one of the tiny potatoes, asparagus (parboiled then sauteed in a bit of butter and good balsamic vinegar) and spinach (parboiled and later to be cooked in garlic and olive oil). I know, I've done it 100 times. But I still like it. And I never had it with the potatoes before.
And I'm gonna eat that feast in front of the television while watching Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendez in Ghost Rider, an insane movie that I happen to like watching every now and then, if just to watch Cage ride a flaming Harley custom up the side of a high rise.
Okay, so that's the single life. Not fantastic, but pretty rich if you milk it. I could do worse, right?
It's all good. I hope you're all having a great night, wherever you are.