Iron & Wine

I just made a grilled cheese sandwich. For the first time in maybe... 3 or 4 years?

Man, I've been missing out.

I bought some of that V8 Tomato soup in a box, added some herbs to it, then topped it with mozzarella. Then I made a grilled cheddar cheese sandwich, amped up with some Mesquite smoked turkey breast and voila! (Ha! First I typed "Viola!")

C'est si bon! I imagine I'll be eating that on many more rainy winter evenings. Mmmm.

Last night was good too. I went to see Iron & Wine at the Ryman. I drank cabernet out of a plastic cup and sat next to the boy who stole my heart away this summer with his saute pans and one-dimpled smile. We had great seats in the second row of the balcony and Sam Beam's voice made me wonder if his children realize how fortunate they are (assuming he sang them to sleep when they were babies).* The show was the loveliest kind of mellow-- fantastically comfortable.

While listening to one of the songs, (sorry, can't remember the name for once) I had this Fantasia kind of moment when I realized how much it sounded like rain. I closed my eyes briefly and imagined this scene with all the pitter patter of the plucked guitar strings and the gentle sporadic percussion cadence of the larger drops and then violin strings adding the harmony of all those droplets running downstream into pools. It was beautiful! But before my thought had even ended, I was struck by the beauty of my current state.

By the fact that I wasn't huddled in a ravine in some war torn country, running from explosions, or fending off hunger pangs with my mind so focused on survival that there's no room for anything else.

In that moment, I was humbled and grateful to be a such a "rich" American, with a job and money to pay for a ticket to an experience that enabled me to hear what rain would sound like if it were music.


*Apparently he did.