Salt

Salt on my lips when I sweat. A crust of salt on my skin when I swim, SCUBA dive, snorkel. Salt makes my eyelashes stick together, and my skin feel dry and tight, and when I open my mouth underwater, I taste the brine. Salt water stings the inner membranes of my nose if too much goes in it, drawing water to my eyes.

Salt is earth. It is flavor. It is crystal. It is crust.

Salt is foundation.

Salt is strong and vital, sold and earthy. And we eat it. We eat earth. And we want more. “Worth his salt.” Doesn’t that come from back in the days when salt was more valuable than gold?

I love thinking about consumables being precious. Not because they were rare, but because food was valued. Saffron. Spices. Salt. Do we value food anymore? Most of it is so cheap I feel like we don’t. Of course, that’s the McDonald’s aspect of food I’m talking about. Fine dining still exists, thank heavens.

But Salt. I like it on my skin. I like it in the sea. I like it in the air so I can smell it. I like it in my sweets to balance the sugar. I like pouring it into bowls, coarse sea salt especially, though Kosher will do.

There has been a gourmet salt thing recently — whole shops dedicated to pink, white, black salts. I wonder if the flavor differences are that noticeable? Or maybe it’s not just flavor but aftertaste, or compatibility with other flavors, or structure, or aesthetic. I’ve never tried a specialty salt. All of our salts are white: baking salt, fine and iodized and in a cylindrical canister; Kosher salt in a heavy box with a spout; coarse sea salt, also in a canister, though smaller and with one of those annoying plastic dispensers on top where you spin the lid to create different openings.

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.