sometimes a fancy salt helps

seasoning into the void

The salt appeared one afternoon in a package so large it could hold a bear cub. It was a promotional package from a network for a show which I won’t name to protect the guilty but, suffice it to say, if you have ever received such a thing, it would help you to understand how everything has gone so wrong. The package — which, to be clear, was not intended for me, but for the man with whom I reside — contained two expensive pieces of technology that look like droids but are in fact speakers, one pair flannel pajamas, a fancy tin of artisanal chocolate that’s meant to improve your mood, custom pottery, an impractically-sized white blanket that’s soft as a cloud, one kitschy fridge magnet, assorted swag so bad I’ve already blocked it out and the best fucking salt I have ever tasted in my life.

Listen I am not going to tell you that this $12 salt will solve all your problems but it is helping to solve mine. Since receiving this salt (“here,” said my husband of the salt, “you want this?”) everything I’ve eaten has tasted better. This salt transforms fowl, fish and your half-burnt morning eggs. It is a delight sprinkled upon the busted-green counter potatoes you peeled and roasted anyway because the world is falling apart and your neck is inexplicably sweating again and no, you’re not making one more goddamn trip to the store.

Years ago, when I still lived in Brooklyn and was also still young, I had a beautiful-terrible friend who was dating a known jerk who worked for a pretentious food magazine. I mostly liked them both (I like jerks! and pretentious food magazines!) but I hated them together. They cooked for us often, mainly things that took all day to make and no one wanted to eat like blood-sausage cassoulet. Once, they came to my apartment for dinner and bickered the entire night. The man had brought me salt and told me I should add it to the risotto I’d made. I told him I already had salt and he said, “You don’t have this salt.” It was, in fact, excellent salt, salt-ier than any I’d tasted. They fought about that too. It was a comically terrible night. I talked about how bad it was for years. Still, if given the choice, I’d take the salt-fighting timeline over whatever the hell this is.

We’re going about as if things are normal, tap-tap-tapping away about whatever we tap tap about. The boiling frog metaphor is tired [whispers: still, are we the boiling frogs?]. I truly don’t know how to hold all the things that currently require holding.

So I’m recommending salt?