'There's a fog upon...'

1. In a strange retro mood last night. Almost but not quite channeling the 60's munchies, I craved something sweet and not wanting to bust into the hand packed pint of Fenton's pumpkin ice cream (wait for it, wait...) don't ask me why, even insane reasoning has it's moments, like some sort of Catholic school girl in purgatory, I circled the kitchen opening the freezer door, closing it, slamming cupboards, even checking the sorry popcorn, trail mix drawers, until my vision latched onto the 2 plump turkey figs (from the backyard tree planted by Lana) ripening on the window sill. Figs. Never crossed my palate until I was 30 something. But, I remember being with the 1st girl friend in the middle of the day on Polk St, sitting in a theater, watching probably one of the greatest cinematic fig scenes on celluloid; Alan Bates in DH Lawrence's 'Women in Love' comparing a split fig to female anatomical parts while devouring it. Uh, yeah. My favorite way to eat figs is to heat the oven at 425, placing all the figs on a tray and roasting in the oven until the juices start to render themselves from the flesh, and the fruit begins to split. Remove from oven. Serve over a pile of vanilla ice cream. I don't know what it was about the night, but not wanting to turn the oven on, I sliced the figs in quarters and threw a gigantic nob of unsalted butter into a pan. Placing the figs face down in the butter I let them caramelize. Turned them over once onto the skin side I let them cook some more. Dribbling brown sugar (a distant cousin of ice cream) on the soft syrupy goodness sent the plated dessert over the edge.

2. Spent an entire night watching Scorsese's, 'George Harrison, Living in the Material World.' HBO documentary. I teared up in unexpected places. The first time when the great Ravi Shankar played; the other moment came as a list of all of George's songs rolled up the credit screen. George Harrison. Gifted. The Enlightened one.

3. Bengal tigers. An endangered species. Population at approximately 2500. Yesterday in rural Ohio, after the owner of a County Animal Farm freed all the captive animals (lions, tigers, bears, wolves and monkeys) into the surrounding area and then killed himself, sheriff and deputies (safari fever) bagged almost all of the predators including 18 Bengals. Gdamn. Tranquillizing darts anyone?