Thursday, October 11, 2012

Heartbreaking things

Today it broke my heart a little to see, when I opened the strawberry jam (jordbaer is strawberry in Norwegian)--a big, rather ugly jar of the cheapest, conventional, non-organic strawberry jam--that there were about seven little preserved strawberries at the top, arranged in a little circle with one in the center, like a flower. (Underneath those little whole strawberries was the normal amalgamated jam.) Someone cares about the experience of this jam!

Walking out of Dan's one-room apartment into the foyer we share, to head up to my attic, the entire space had a brilliant pink-orange cast to it, sourced from one little square of bright sunlight on Dan's work jacket. It's so rarely sunny here you forget about the little tricks the sun has.




Today I spent about five hours harvesting beets and carrots (the ground is so wet you don't even need a spade), thinking with great focus, for the first time, about a recent very sad argument with a friend. This friend is so wonderful that I can't blame them at all, or think in any way that I'm better off without them, which are two ways of coping that I usually excel at.

Another heartbreaking thing: Nothing made me so sad as a kid than when a well-meaning adult (my mom, maybe) would reach a hand back for me to hold, and for whatever reason I wouldn't grab onto the hand, and after a little while the adult would give up and relax the hand and bring it back to their body. This is much sadder than when I reached out my own hand and no one took it.

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