Some Women Turn to Salt, Looking Back

Throwing Away the Past: Part II



The recent clear out has got me feeling heartsick for the 80s and I've spent several nights buying and not buying 80s music online. I'm listening to New Order's "Age of Consent" as I write this, and I've been downloading obscure songs from The Cure and Fugazi. Obscure, yes, but songs that I loved twenty-five years ago. Ah, where does the time go?



Do you know the story of Lot's wife, the one who turned back as she fled the destruction of Sodom and was turned to a pillar of salt? What is the meaning--well, no. First let me ask you why you only know her as Lot's wife. Didn't she have a name? (She did. It was Idrit or Idris, depending on the source. Sometimes it's Edith or Ado. Take your pick; I like Idrit.) But what is the meaning of that story, do you think? Why a pillar of salt? And why such an extreme punishment for the oh-so-human transgression of looking back? What is it that is so destructive about looking back? In one interpretation of the story Idrit turns back to see if her daughters (married to Sodomites, men of Sodom) had followed her out of the city. When she turns back, she sees God and is punished for it by being turned to a pillar of salt.

These days I should be so lucky.

The bottle? The one in the picture, I mean. The bottle is one that a friend of mine, Robert, used to carry in the inside pocket of his trench coat when we were in high school. He used to fill it up from his parent's liquor cabinet when they weren't around, then we would get drunk off it. I'm not quite sure how I ended up with it (he probably stashed it with me when he thought he was going to get caught with it and punished) but it was one of the things that I had of his after he killed himself a week before graduation and I put it into the trunk and I carried it around for twenty-five years. And day before yesterday I finally, finally decided I could let it go. I kept the flowers I took from an arrangement at his memorial service though.

(God, I hated that day.)



(I will never not hate that day.)

Let's listen to "M" by The Cure. I loved this song, back in the day.



(Yes, that's Robert Smith in his pre-ratted out hair and lipstick days.  Seems so ordinary, doesn't he?)

And here, let's laugh. This is me and Robert, ca. 1987, playing dress up before going out with Dave.



I would never, not willingly, not ever go back to being 16 again.  I mean, would you? I'll take 41 over 16 any day of the week. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

But Wait

Ah. I just thought: What if--what if Idrit wasn't being punished for her transgression?  Salt is, after all, necessary to life, a symbol of permanence, loyalty, purity. This is a strange thought perhaps, but think of it from the point of view of the deity. How better to help someone who was caught in a moment of weakness than by turning her into something more pure, more loyal? That is not a punishment at all--from the deity's perspective. (And perhaps to Idrit as well, no?)