October 2025 . . . .

“The Problem with Sardines”

There are two scenes, side by side in my head, like a forced choice preference test.


In the scene on the left, a doorway opens into a kitchen; the counter and sink on the left and the refrigerator flush against the right corner forming the small L-shaped room — barely large enough for four paces. Dimly lit with a yellow lightbulb that flickered every time someone’s stride accidentally turned too much into a stomp, the vinyl floor sticks to your feet and raises slightly with each of your four steps like lifting your thighs from a leather car seat in the summer.


There’s a window to the left of the fridge letting a ray of natural light stream onto the bowl of peaches next to the sink, freshly purchased from the truck parked at the corner down the road, and washed. A box of corn flakes sits next to that. There are two spoons that were used to stir sugar into that morning’s coffee sitting rinsed in the sink, and the room smells like toast and cinnamon sugar. The cool air from the vent blows up your legs as you stand at the window and let the sun peek through the slits in the blinds and soak through your eyelids. The fridge hums a bass line while the blue jays outside provide the melody. In the scene on the right, stainless steel double doors open to reveal three pristinely polished glass shelves. On the top shelf sits a white tazza bowl with Sicilian blue patterns painted along the rim, holding three handfuls of strawberries — the red of the berries painfully popping against the white of the bowl — vanilla beans tightly wrapped in crinkled parchment paper, a sand-colored ceramic egg cradle with an egg placed politely upright in each divot, a thirty-two-ounce carafe of what could only be assumed is milk, a head of Romanesco broccoli, and a jar of Bonne Maman apricot preserves.


On the second shelf in between a vase of pink peonies and a lavender sprig planted in a rocks glass is a silver cake stand balancing a half-eaten croquembouche — the flecks of chilled, chipped caramel leaving a subtle ring around the stand. Next to the lavender, a porcelain figurine rabbit crouches beside a bundle of white asparagus tied with twine and a ginger root resting on a tea plate. On the third shelf is a copper pitcher with carrot leaves dangling over its lip and a lazy susan holding mason jars of grapefruit juice and spearmint tea, and a bottle of white wine.


Two scenes — two roads diverged in a hopeful, yet ambivalent, wandering mind.


There are two wolves inside you, and one wants you in a house like your grandma used to live in; surrounded by trees, with a chair that’s yours, and a bookshelf that’s yours with books that are yours — only living with what you need and want to get by. A good bowl of peaches and a coffee machine that does the job. The other wolf wants fancy jams and indulgence and yummy soaps for you. It wants you to bask in the fruits of your hard labor. If you must do the labor, why not reap the rewards of it? It whispers. Splurge on the name brand, replace the torn pair of socks, get the medium over the small. Maybe even go to Whole Foods, wowee . . . .


There are two paths and one is a coastal South Carolina kitchen built in the 70s and the other is a fridgescape designed where Marie Kondo meets Marie Antoinette.


To be this or to be that: that is the question. A completely ludicrous question for someone who must remind themselves when ordering something as trivial as a coffee that it’s neither the last coffee they’ll ever have nor the final decision they’ll ever make! To purchase the coffee or to not purchase the coffee — or to say fuck the coffee and get a chai?


Or say fuck the chai altogether and slide that five to seven dollars into an IRA? A CD? My 401K, a BA, wait what about a home savings account??


I’ll sit on the Penrose staircase and wait for the coupon clippings in the mail, and I’ll push that best by date on the yogurt by a couple, thank you very much.


Fridgescaping (noun): the practice of aesthetically styling a fridge’s interior as a curated, intentional space rather than mere food storage; popularized during economic downturn and periods of cultural uncertainty, it reflects a shift toward glorifying groceries and managing scarcity — romanticizing what one could afford rather than highlighting what was lacking, a form of minimalism that became both a coping mechanism and a subtle performance of controlling what you can.