Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I think that we've probably taken our farming metaphors too far, that we've moved from sowing seeds to slaughtering lambs, and really our whole economy is wrapped up in vending those tiny lamb pieces even though we've convinced ourselves that our worth is just measured in wheat and cotton and soybeans. But if we planted ourselves in our fields, I don't think we'd be so fond of what we'd sprout.

But then there are things in the world like that salt mine in Poland, with a cathedral and statues and chandeliers carved out of salt. All of those miners down there over all of those years, coaxing shapes from the walls because it wasn't as though they were doing anything else. Just, you know, farming table salt for a few hundred years. All of this under our feet that the planet--the same one with the supervolcanoes and intraplate earthquakes--has arranged for. To keep us guessing, I suppose, in the way that everything that's already big just gets bigger until it turns out to be so small you could fit it in your pocket.

If, as I fear, my bones really are made of cement and the only roads that I won't sink into are the hard ones, then maybe I should plan a trip to the Valley of Flowers. You know? To sink into the soil someplace beautiful, plant myself somewhere hard to find. Become a statue, or a signpost, or a warning.