It is 5:53 pm on the Friday after Christmas and I am walking through a plant nursery in -8 degree weather looking for a Frantoio olive tree. This is how I know I am still unwell. I was not allowed to watch non-religious films when growing up. Fiddler on the Roof was the farthest my parents ventured from evangelical propaganda media and I would imagine Topol as my papa, begging my actual father to let me, if not convert, at least take Hebrew lessons. When my parents eventually divorced and my father’s nervous breakdown allowed me to have mixed company sleepovers my senior year of high school, my friends fed me only the good stuff. Radiohead and Amelie. Pulp Fiction and Goodbye Lenin and Kids and Conor Oberst and The Clash. As a result, every time I fall in love it is set to the sound of Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros and every time I am sad or lonesome I drive to the market to stick my hands in deep sacks of beans and buy windowsill plants and artichokes. Right now I seek lemons but they are out of season. Olives will do. My Mediterranean blood knows what life looks like even when snow and sorrow threaten to ice me over, freeze me out. It knows yellow brine and bread are a therapy when I forget I need it and so, whenever I find myself standing in the aisle of a greenhouse, velvety endives hanging from a bag in my limp hand, I am reminded “oh yes, this again.”
tinyletter #003
tinyletter #003
tinyletter #003
It is 5:53 pm on the Friday after Christmas and I am walking through a plant nursery in -8 degree weather looking for a Frantoio olive tree. This is how I know I am still unwell. I was not allowed to watch non-religious films when growing up. Fiddler on the Roof was the farthest my parents ventured from evangelical propaganda media and I would imagine Topol as my papa, begging my actual father to let me, if not convert, at least take Hebrew lessons. When my parents eventually divorced and my father’s nervous breakdown allowed me to have mixed company sleepovers my senior year of high school, my friends fed me only the good stuff. Radiohead and Amelie. Pulp Fiction and Goodbye Lenin and Kids and Conor Oberst and The Clash. As a result, every time I fall in love it is set to the sound of Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros and every time I am sad or lonesome I drive to the market to stick my hands in deep sacks of beans and buy windowsill plants and artichokes. Right now I seek lemons but they are out of season. Olives will do. My Mediterranean blood knows what life looks like even when snow and sorrow threaten to ice me over, freeze me out. It knows yellow brine and bread are a therapy when I forget I need it and so, whenever I find myself standing in the aisle of a greenhouse, velvety endives hanging from a bag in my limp hand, I am reminded “oh yes, this again.”