The Simple Salad Option
“Sometimes you finally get around to hanging the art on the walls, and then it’s time to leave,” said a former lover living down the street from me in Manhattan.
And that’s precisely what happened. The art went up (well, a giant framed print of The Clash — I’m not fancy enough to own any real art), and a few days later it was decided. It was time to move west.
Here in Oakland I’ve delayed hanging anything on my walls for over a year.
My next serious boyfriend, the one I called my Chief Adventure Enabler, made a similar remark. “If you hang the prints and it’s time to leave, well what’s so bad about that?”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll hang them this weekend.”
My mind went someplace else.
Why does everyone keep encouraging this? Doesn’t anybody want me to stay?
The socially awkward get a pass for making freedom that much more attainable.
Sometimes though, we all just need a minute. To catch up with ourselves. To catch the emotions rolling around inside of our beefy brains.
I don’t read the news. I know it’s bad.
And I’d be sad to leave my apartment. It’s grounded me well over the past two years.
But if we continue moving, maybe the clawing sensation goes away.
Forget it. I want to stand in a bright kitchen, you know — the all-white one with real marble countertops , like in a television commercial — and do something extravagant like slice tomatoes.
Yes, that’s it. I want to make myself a nice salad and never use my computer ever again.
But wait.
I need to catch my breath. It’s time to revisit my dreams. To listen more intently as the train stops for just a moment outside my window. To silently watch as the street lamps flicker and wane.
To be here. Just here.
Maybe soon I’ll be there. I can be, after all. I’ll travel again soon.
I think about how smarty-pants people say things like “well it’s simply semantics.”
Well, this is just logistics.
Isn’t it?
The bougie part of me used to wonder if was even possible to live a storyful life without being ridiculously rich.
The answer: define rich.
I’ve hung one picture on the wall. The others await sturdier wire. I have the thin green kind, the whimsical kind for making crafts or wrapping decorative plastic plants into tight, presentable displays — but I need the strong, simple kind if the heavy frames are meant to stay.
