fresh black pepper

got in late today, after dark, but they'd saved me supper here:


chicken with rice and bulgar wheat, eggplant with garlic yoghourt, salad of lettuce and green onion with lemon and olive oil, bread with honey and white butter, not-too-sweet cocoa cake.

today at breakfast one of the servers here sat at a table by himself filling the retaurant's pepper shakers with black pepper, from a pile on a newspaper on the table in front of him where he'd shaken it out of a paper envelope.

i like to sit up late these days, after the others have gone to bed, and put more wood on the fire, and drink all the tea i can drink from the double boiler that stays hot til after midnight. they make tea here with water drawn from a spring. most nights the black cat comes and sits next to me. sometimes i listen to music, sometimes jazz, sometimes irish spinning songs which i've recently discovered. i continue to have a soft spot for star trek.