2022-08-01 - 2:33 p.m.

We don't often finely dine, but the other night we saw the Jenny Slate stop-motion movie about the little shell guy, and after some emotions were felt, we stopped into a little French place, the kind with four two-tops and glasses of good wine for $9 and a menu full of loaves made out of organs, and we each ordered a few things. But we're not exactly as broke as we used to be, either, and so I ordered the tomatoes. They were $15. It was maybe a half of a big heirloom tomato, sliced up thick, with clarified butter on top and salt. And of course it's a joke, and of course 18-year-old me is laughing, as are many others, but it was July 29th and we're still breathing and I've thought about it six-seven times since I ate it, the pure tomato of it, the butter, the salt that hadn't dissolved all the way yet. I've tried to resist thinking too much about food, and about what it means to order a $15 plate of tomatoes, but it's also true that I've been listening to a podcast about the Russian revolution and all those czars, all those children, all those lines of people stretching so far off and all of whom are so long gone, it can't be the worst thing in the world to buy, for a few moments, a couple of slices of summer, of fat, of salt. It's okay to remember that two things can be true at the same time.

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