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It occurred to me today after having made apple butter, apple chutney, applesauce and then moving on to concord grape jelly that I am really hooked on this idea of preservation. This desire to capture is what drives me to write, to take photos and to save food for the cold winter. At its best it is an embrace, a remembrance and an honoring but at it's worst it is a grasping, a longing to stay forever lodged in a single perfect moment. It is Keats's line "Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours." The last oozings.
After putting the boys to bed and kissing their peaceful foreheads I came down to clean up the kitchen, put the jars in the cellar and prepare for bed. I was seized with that terrible feeling of wanting things to stay just as they are. Wanting an eternal childhood, wanting ever ripe fruit, wanting things to stay the same.. we all know how that story ends. So for now, the canning is done, the house is quiet and I am remembering the line in Steiner's verse for courage: "It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely to live out of absolute trust without any security of existence."
