When I think of non-perishable items, you might think of food, but that isn’t where my mind takes me. I think of my mother’s phone number I’ve had memorized since grade school, I think of the worn-out paperback book I’ve reread a countless times, I think of the candle I refuse to light because of the petals beautifully placed inside the wax, I think of the first poetry book I ever wrote, and I think of who the world, or a higher power, says I am destined to be.
If you drive straight on I-35, starting roughly at the southern border of Texas, and drive just over 1,000 miles straight, on one single road, you’ll meet a little town that’s grown up a little now, but when I knew it, everything was labeled as perishable, or non.
No phones at the dinner table, never start eating before everyone has sat down and filled their plate, always memorize your safety route; itemizing where things are for an emergency go-to bag run. A mantra I’ve never said out loud, and the ones I wish weren’t ringing throughout my ears. A grudge with an ex I decided never to spend, my playlist of 12 songs I’ve listened to on repeat. My favorite pen, the only one I chose to ever write with.
Maybe in a certain lens, these items, these attributes, things, are all perishable, in one way or another. Though they have no expiration date to me.
When I think of non-perishable food items, I think of rice, pasta, flour, oats, canned goods, fats & oils, nuts, and the seasoning and baking basics. There used to be a cornfield where McDonald’s now stands. Behind my house was an abandoned cow farm, and my grandparents were surrounded by nothing but corn and bean fields. In this little farm town, there were non-perishable items, and there were perishable. There were the town people, and there were those who were not welcome. In school, there were the cool kids, and of course the ‘losers.’ All throughout the town, we labeled each other, each item, each packaged good in the local grocery store as perishable or non-perishable.
I revisit home when I can, though so much has changed. The cornfields have been shredded into concrete Pizza Huts, and the pastures into youth sporting facilities. Though if I step into one of the few bars covering its delicately charming Main Street, I’m greeted with an impromptu class reunion. The basics were simple back then, in the town, disposable or not, perishable or not.
Perishable food items such as corn or beans are the foundation of roughly every single food item in your grocery store. More realistically, it’s roughly over 40%, hence the dramatic argument still standing sound.
If you were to start driving on I-35N from the southernmost Texas city, drive straight for over 1,000 miles on the same road, you’d land in Minnesota, just over the border into the southern part, where all you see is flat land, covered in low grass bowing away from the wind, or a farm and fields, usually quaint. Sometimes, when you just drive over the border in Minnesota, you might see buffalo, and cows, horses, and the most charming single-story houses paired with a 50s-style barn. But mostly you will see corn and beans.
On one of my last visits back home, I drove. It wasn’t straight through I-35N on a 1,000-mile gas trek from the southernmost Texan city. Though it was comparable, just as tiresome. I have an impending desire to always have several shoe options on hand. Each one with the stiletto, toe, and shine interchanging between my choices. I will typically pack twenty pairs of shoes for a seven-day trip, so as a non-perishable item, my desire for shoe options, plus I wanted to bring my two dogs with me; driving was the only thing that made proper sense. It had been some time since I visited before this trip, and when I crossed over the border into Minnesota, I was reminded of something I’m not sure I ever noticed.
There are flat grass plains, and flat farming fields, pastures without a hill to climb, and roads that look like they just… end… in twenty straight miles. I’m not sure if I noticed this while I was a child, but if the earth were flat, it most certainly is in southern Minnesota.
It’s a warmth in a hug as it feeds you a sleeping pill. Revisiting southern Minnesota, after what was my longest time away, I felt a warm feeling as I arrived in town. This was it; this was the community I was (sort of) a member of. It’s where my family is, and even though I used Google Maps to get from the house I grew up in to Main Street (clinically geographically challenged), it was still the most familiar. But when I got to Main Street, I could see it again. I drove past the only stoplight, and when I peered out onto the road in front of me, it looked as though the world just ended, and if I were to continue driving, I might prove a flat-earther right.
That’s the version I saw. The graph that I grew up on, and boy was I a little wiz with calculus. But this graph had two colors, black and white, perishable and non; it had where it was and where it ended. I could see each of these things clearer than the snow in December. Maybe I was frustrated growing up; I knew there was so much gray, so much color to the world; it’s just that I couldn’t see it yet.
As a visual person, this became my non-perishable. A part of me will always associate southern Minnesota with putting constraints on what my world could be, but it’s not the town, it’s not the farm, nor the flat fields of corn, or the perishable or not. It’s simply a non-perishable item for me to have my world, visually, have no end meet.
The graph and its dotted points were quite harsh. Perishable or not, disposable or not, cool or lame. It’s not saying the town was like this or even is today, but it is the version of the town that got to know me. There are rumors of blue, and yellow, and maybe even purple dotted points added into the graph today, and perhaps the graph is now beautiful if I were to study its paint.
It is, however, to say that the graph that knew me, the perishable or not, laid a framework for my initial thought patterns, my dreams, and, dare I say, who I am as a woman today. The corn and beans our grandfathers grew and shared that make up almost half of all the food we consume. It lays a foundation for Thanksgiving dinner, for a celebration dinner, and a regular family meal.
If you didn’t know already, you can drive straight, on one road (I-35N) for over 1,000 miles straight from the southernmost Texan city to reach southern Minnesota. The fields wave at a friend opposite the wind, the cornfields lay flat till the sun kisses the stalks’ tassels, and the cows truly pay you no mind. The people as I knew them rarely left or drove the road that appears to just ‘end.’ And those that did rarely spoke about the world beyond the field.
Back then, a few dozen more cornfields and a couple of corporate takeovers ago, the world seemed simple; it appeared black and white. Perishable or not, it had an end, and corn and beans were the foundation of our health and meals. I labeled my hobbies perishable or not, my desires as disposable or not; in moments of growth, often my own sanity teetered and shared its role between completely lame and allowed.
I always knew a graph with many colors was far more beautiful than one of two, and that gray bounced between thousands of hues in every moment of our lives. For me, it wasn’t until I drove past the road I couldn’t see. I still label things on my graph as black and white, perishable or not, and those have created such a beautiful foundation for my desires, my motivations, strengths, and what makes me. But I’ve added in beautiful colors; there are purple and blue dots, maybe a giant red line pointing upwards, and some sprinkles of pink scattered randomly.
I am a visual person, and in the most introspective way, I took things as metaphor, as face value, or as a challenge in every detail that surrounded me. I have many non-perishable items: my love for poetry, my insane need for countless stiletto options, beautiful voluptuous hair, a feeling of charitable virtue, and never creating an end to the world surrounding me.
I studied the way the lights in the theatre shone against the fabric walls for the majority of my first movie theatre experiences, rather than watching the funny cartoon. Maybe it is that I look at the world a different way, at least my world. I believe each of our worlds is different; we first learned the world through a graph that doesn’t correlate to the world you are in today, or maybe the world that you desire. We each learn labels from the townspeople that define who we are, whether it’s limited to perishable or not, or a kinder tone; we each start the world with different non-perishable items, with a different graph.
This was mine, and how it shaped me.
(Please don’t eat expired food, though. Metaphor only. I’m not responsible for anyone who gets food poisoning trying to eat a perishable item as a non-perishable.)
xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
WhatSheridanSaid.com
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C
Updates from Sheridan and Production:
We’ve been away for a little while now. Work has been rather heavy, and I’m hoping to share news soon; things build and then fall, then get back up stronger, and fall through a miscommunication. The world is waiting on movement; it needs it to survive. And so do we.
Sheridan has shared two new pieces of art on her website, and once again, thank you to everyone who has supported thus far.
This new drawing, available at Sheridan’s store, is called “The Muse’s Apartment.”
Sheridan also released new social media content across her What Sheridan Said pages, including never-before-seen poetry, writing excerpts, and, of course, cute photos of Sheridan herself.
xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
WhatSheridanSaid.com
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C
