Dear Delicious,
Today, in the heatwave, under the heat dome, in the year 2026 of our Climate Catastrophe, I could not help but think of all the goodness.
Goodness like ricotta cheese. Like wind in leaves. The smell of hummingbird sage. The soft clucks of quail. Goodness like olallieberry jam; bread. Just good stuff all over the place! An avalanche, really, of good things all within a few feet of where I was reading. And yes, that also was good! I am reading a mystery, Three Bags Full. And in the book: mangel-wurzels.* So good! I feel I looked up mangel-wurzels once before, many years ago, but I had forgotten them, so they delighted me anew.
I was pondering all the goodness, because I was, in the part of my mind that wasn't reading, thinking about Wanting. Wanting as one does when one plants a garden and wants to reap a harvest. That kind of long-term want. The planned for, effort-full, pay-out or pay-off. I know its siren song- I have planted and watched things die and wither, along with hope. They grow funny, or sickly, or poorly, or, worst of all, you neglect them, just once, by mistake, and there they lie: all dead. Gardening isn't for gentle souls. It is for tough nuts that don't crack. And yet. In all this want, there is so much other goodness you could acquire. Frozen wild blueberries are SO good! Yes, they are in a deathless plastic packet, but, they are good! It is nice, it is 'rewarding' to grow ones' own whatever it is, but it is also nice to reap the harvest of the market, the icy frozen shelves. I mean, I guess, that you can want, I won't stop you, want until your teeth hurt, but, if you find yourself being injured by your obsessive desire, please stop to consider a substitute before you go hurting yourself further. Maybe, while you are fiddling around with re-directing your desire, you might even stop wanting what you haven't got.
What you have got, I bet, is a jar of pickles. Probably one that is shoved to the back of the fridge. I had one. I ate the pickles very intentionally, because I saw a fellow on Instagram use the leftover brine to marinate chicken! I don't know what he did with his pickle-chicken after the brining. I dipped mine in flour and cayenne pepper and pan fried it, and whoo, pickle-chicken is good!
* The mangel-wurzel seems like a machine you crank that would wring out your clothes while simultaneously playing a hurdy-gurdy tune!
