The world is large, my gratitude small.
Do you know the long stretch between knowing and feeling? Intellectually, I know the world is rich with beauty but lately my heart feels too cramped to feel the magic.
Don’t worry, it’s only sadness talking. She returned this week, a damp seeping that began with a drip drip drip and quickly reached saturation. This will pass. It always does. I’m not drowning, just waving (with apologies to Stevie Smith).
A bout of the blues can really sour the search for thankfulness — but that, of course, is when I need gratitude even more.
Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Big or small, practical or profound, attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy, and my gratitude grows when shared with you.
If gratitude is an act of attention, this week I am working hard to live wide awake to the world. Sadness wants to sap your strength, turn you inward, make you small. In this funk, looking out is more action than I think I can muster and exactly what I need.
Please note, that yes, I am writing with great emphasis. Some days italics and exclamations (!) are excellent props for the enthusiasm I can’t quite reach. Punctuation can be a very cheery companion, for which I am thankful.
To that end: tomatoes!
Can you believe the bounty?! It’s harvest time and I’m eating tomatoes morning, noon, and night. Tomatoes and salt. Tomatoes and balsamic. Tomatoes and cheese. Tomatoes sliced, diced, pureed. Tomatoes in eggs, in salads, in soups, in everything.
Every year I am stunned with deliciousness. How quickly I forget how good the world can taste, how easy it is to feel lifted and light. With this fresh and wild sweetness, sadness has no room to grow.
And that’s my secret: starve sadness, eat tomatoes!
What are you thankful for today?
Ode to Tomatoes
by Pablo Neruda
The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it’s time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.