The spice must go!

Okay, I went with the Dune reference for the title, but I had to choose between that and several others: 

On the rack

In a Pickle

Herbs and a-whey

A Change of Seasons

Spicemaggedon

And several others. I'm sure you'll have other ideas. 

What finally made me settle on the title above is that I realized that the guy whose famous series was about a substance that made faster-than-light travel possible, a substance called Spice, was named Frank HERBert. So there. 

Sorry, I'm crazed from lack of sleep. 

 

We have a moving truck booked, and if you've ever hired house movers, you know they won't take food. Especially stuff in open containers. Why should they? Who wants to deal with that?

If we were moving locally I could bring all the open herb and spice jars and condiment bottles to the new place in the car, but we are moving hundreds of miles away, and between humans and large dog there isn't going to be a whole lot of room. Plus, while we can get to the area in less than 12 hours, the movers may take three to seven days. Even with all our crap, we can't fill up the truck ourselves. So we need suitcases and a hotel room. 

So no, no room for spices. Ironically, the thing that makes travel to the stars possible in Dune cannot travel at all here. 

And no one wants your old, open spice and pickle jars. I had a small handful that had not yet been opened, which I will donate with canned soup and the like. But the rest? Down the toilet, down the drain, or just into the trash. 

I just finished the job and I have an incredible mound of plastic and glass for recycling day on Wednesday. I also have a garbage can that smells like an amazing antipasto. 

Now the goal is not to cook anything between now and next week that will be bland because I had to do the purge. Needs coriander? Sorry, that's down the sink. A bit of rosemary? Headed for the landfill. Onion powder? Pardon the oniony scent in the loo. Hundreds of dollars' worth of flavors, gone. 

Can't be helped, I guess. I've already had to part with so much -- sentimental items, books a-plenty, money like there's no tomorrow -- so what's a recently opened jar of dried bay leaves compared to that? 

On the bright side, some of those seasonings looked a little too seasoned. I think my bottle of dried savory had a Durkee label from two or three iterations ago. Never had a lot of call for savory .. . .

Frank Herbert killed my friend.

Okay, not really, but in a small way he contributed.

The late Frank Herbert, shown without the blood on his hands.

Herbert, of course, wrote the Dune saga, which my friend and the other dorks in our circle began reading in high school. (Nerd herds didn't have book groups per se, but a book that got high marks got passed around, and discussed while doing other things.) I never warmed to the series, as much as I admired the writing and the complexity---basically I hated all the characters and got sick of the entire universe. I plodded as far as God Emperor of Dune, and then I gave up.

My pal continued for at least one more, but I don't think his heart was in it by then. (Spoiler alert!) I think his favorite character was Duncan Idaho, who was killed in the first book---although that didn't stop the guy from appearing in later books. It's complicated.

The problem was not D. Idaho; it was that my friend took some Dune mythology too seriously. The quasi-sciencey mystical types who populate the series are always on about focus and fear and stuff. Yoda totally ripped them off. One of the best known quotes from the first book goes like this:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Yeah, well. Fear serves a purpose sometimes. So does pain. Over the course of years I think my pal had conflated the two, telling himself that pain is the mind-killer. I remember when still young, my friend clutching his stomach, saying to himself, "Fear is the mind-killer." Perhaps he said "Pain is the mind-killer." Either fear or the acknowledgment of pain might have prevented his untimely death.

He died in middle age of a massive heart attack that I feel he almost certainly mistook for stomach upset. He'd always been a nervous sort, with the kind of family of origin that could make anyone nervous. And a real type A type. We know now that ulcers are caused by bacteria, but it doesn't mean the stomach is not upset by stress. And he had a lot of stress. We know too that indigestion and heart attacks are often mistaken for each other. By the time he got to the hospital it was too late.

I wonder if he was quoting Bloody Herbert's philosophy to himself all the way.

Anyway, I don't really blame Frank Herbert for his death, as pleasant as it is to blame someone when terrible things happen. I don't even blame my friend. We all make mistakes. That's why pencils have erasers. Sadly, some things cannot be erased.

If I have a point to all this, I suppose it's that fear and pain can be our allies---vicious, horrid allies---to help keep us alive.

And don't believe everything you read in novels.