must be worth losing if it is worth something

I came back to San Francisco, and suddenly, I felt ready to leave. Really leave. Maybe it’s time to wave goodbye now.

I returned to finish, burn it down, ‘til the embers smoke on the ground. With such resolve, I walked into my kitchen and went to work on Sunday. I opened the refrigerator, I surveyed the cupboard. Batches of cookies were baked. Vegetables were chopped, quiche was made. Spinach was wilted with sauteed garlic. I won’t lie- it felt good. I felt a surge of comraderie with my mother, or maybe my grandmother. Or A’s mom- he said that when he was young, she would can tomatoes and other vegetables and jam, to last through the winter, to keep the fresh vegetables from rotting during the summer.

I thought about contemplating that- the simple ways to prevent waste, to conserve, to be mindful. I thought about how little I have contemplated that. How I let things fester and decay, throw them away without a second thought. It felt purposeful to take stock, to make use of what had been left behind.

I’ll be more careful when I move away, more careful to only take what I need, and to always make the best of what I take. I haven’t been careful, and I really didn’t notice what that meant until yesterday. When you’re not careful, you don’t even know if what you’ve taken was worth anything, was worth the price, was worth wanting. You are not even conscious of wanting it, for that matter. You just have it. And when you start to see the mold creeping onto the fruit, only then do you wonder if you should regret its loss or not. Did you want it? Do you need it? Is it a loss? Or was it something you should never have bothered with?



*

I feel like I should now do a song-off with last week’s selection, because some people found The Shivers’ Beauty so arresting. The first time I heard The Shivers’ tune, I did find it breathtaking. But upon a second listen, fully listening to the lyrics, it was creepy and too much for me. On the other hand, this week’s song, You Look Like Rain, is exactly my speed, and I can listen to it on repeat if I have a glass of good scotch in hand. First of all, Morphine, Mark Sandman in particular, could probably make a cover of Puff the Magic Dragon seem languorous and mesmerizing. The saxophones and the high hat give the song such a film noir effect that you feel like you’ve happened upon the lost soundtrack of a Bogart/Bacall film. And that’s just it- this song is about a Lauren Bacall, a Katherine Hepburn, an Ingrid Bergman- a sharp broad, not a pop tart. And who wouldn’t swoon over that thought?