Athena, Holding Your Hair, Whispering In Your Ear

For me a few are enough, one is enough, none is enough. This is not for the many, but for you. We are audience enough for each other.

I feel like the grilled cheese is festive, and is generally accepted as a comfort food. I’ve seen several restaurants devoted exclusively to the grilled cheese. But the cold cheese sandwich (with or without onions) is sort of a cipher. No one talks about cheese sandwiches, they don’t appear on restaurant menus, etc. Cheese and crackers are (deservedly) a classic, but what about the humble cheese sandwich?

I can never decide if my life-long love of cheese sandwiches and pickles is a sign of a creeping nostalgia/simplicity of taste that finds itself drawn to homely foods, or a symptom of a crushing depression that occasionally admits of no concerted activity more complex than slapping a slice of cheese on sandwich bread, slicing an onion, and opening a jar of pickles. Probably both. It’s an allweather supper: a reminder of a mythical never-was home when feeling fond, and a 30-second ‘win’ when squashed flat.

Regardless, I’ve been eating the pickles-and-cheese-sandwich combo in some form or another (usually while reading) since I was 8 or 9. In my 20′s I started smoking a pipe alongside the meal, which perfected the combo.