Daily Cascade

What about 'Salt'?

Prompt: Salt
"There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea."
Khalil Gibran
Why, do you think salt is so important and necessary, and in what ways? And why do even so many desserts, such as cookies and cakes, call for salt?

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Salt is such an ordinary product. The sacred in it, however, gives it a dual personality.

We sprinkle salt on our food without a second thought. We even add salt to so many desserts because it stabilizes their taste, and in bread-making, it doesn't let the yeast get out of hand and rise to high heaven. Then, in addition to its practical uses, it finds its way into rituals, sacred rites, and superstitions. In my case, it also finds its way into house-cleaning and opening clogged drains when paired with vinegar.

After all, there is this fact: salt dwells in just about everywhere, outside of us or inside us. The sea mirrors our inner waters, since with salt, we are now honoring the memory of our beginnings. I say our beginnings because life itself rose from the depths of the ocean, the ocean being an endless well of salt; therefore, every living thing carries within it a trace of the sea’s ancient chemistry. No wonder that we call old sailors, "old salt!"

Similar to this, our sorrows become salted when we shed tears and probably this makes our skin salty, as well. Not just sorrows but also joys, too, are often salty with tears of laughter, reunions, and sudden realizations of beauty or truth. Just maybe salt is the language of our bodies when words fail us. This may mean that salt is survival, and so, it is sacred. It is sacred also because it is a symbol of endurance and preservation.

Now that I've thought about salt, I'm now wondering how salt itself would feel about being so sacred and strange with staying power...if it could have feelings, at all. What really puzzles me is how anything, dead or living, can be so resilient and two-faced with both ruin and renewal.

Perhaps, all this may be because salt still remains after water dries out, same as the memory that lingers in traces after our tears dry.