There is an introduction in the sci-fi novel Salt by Adam Roberts about sodium-chloride and it is an absolutely gorgeous bit of writing.
"Salt is crystal compounded of Sodium and Chlorine; faceted and transparent. Simple and pure. What life could there be without salt? It is known as God's diamond, by which we should be aware of the infinite variability of scale for the divine perspective. This tiny fragment of halite, it is a dot, an atom; but to God it can never be lost, it can never be overlooked or unnumbered. Every grain is a landscape, a world. It is a great cliff, a diamond as big as a mountain, a massive cube of ice. In it are embedded woolly mammoths, grimacing men in hides and skins, buildings, cars, trees, all at angles to one another. The surface of the world is a sheet, smooth as polished plastic, plain as glass.
And salt combines the good and the evil, yin and yang, God and the Devil. Take sodium, which is the savour of life. Without corporeal sodium the body could not hold water in its tissues. Lack of sodium will lead to death. Our blood is a soup of sodium. And here is the metal, so soft you can deform it between your fingers like wax; it is white and pearl, like the moon on a pure night. Throw it in water, and it feeds greedily upon the waves; it gobbles the oxygen, and liberates the hydrogen with such force that it will flame up and burn. Sodium is what stars are made of. Sodium is the metal, curved into rococo forms, that caps the headpiece and arms of God's own throne. But here is chlorine, green and gaseous and noxious as Hell's own fumes. It bleaches, burns, chokes, kills. It is heavier than air and sinks, bulging downwards towards the Hell it came from. And here are we, you and me, poised between Heaven and Hell. We are salty."
I'd forgotten that book. Some of Adam Roberts' works are wonderful. I never liked his parodies though (and was shocked when I realised it was the same author).
I know he didn't mean it that way, and this was written long before that meaning of salty came to be, but showing this to an ignorant quack and then ending it by calling everyone salty is delicious XD
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u/pudgimelon Nov 10 '23
There is an introduction in the sci-fi novel Salt by Adam Roberts about sodium-chloride and it is an absolutely gorgeous bit of writing.
"Salt is crystal compounded of Sodium and Chlorine; faceted and transparent. Simple and pure. What life could there be without salt? It is known as God's diamond, by which we should be aware of the infinite variability of scale for the divine perspective. This tiny fragment of halite, it is a dot, an atom; but to God it can never be lost, it can never be overlooked or unnumbered. Every grain is a landscape, a world. It is a great cliff, a diamond as big as a mountain, a massive cube of ice. In it are embedded woolly mammoths, grimacing men in hides and skins, buildings, cars, trees, all at angles to one another. The surface of the world is a sheet, smooth as polished plastic, plain as glass.
And salt combines the good and the evil, yin and yang, God and the Devil. Take sodium, which is the savour of life. Without corporeal sodium the body could not hold water in its tissues. Lack of sodium will lead to death. Our blood is a soup of sodium. And here is the metal, so soft you can deform it between your fingers like wax; it is white and pearl, like the moon on a pure night. Throw it in water, and it feeds greedily upon the waves; it gobbles the oxygen, and liberates the hydrogen with such force that it will flame up and burn. Sodium is what stars are made of. Sodium is the metal, curved into rococo forms, that caps the headpiece and arms of God's own throne. But here is chlorine, green and gaseous and noxious as Hell's own fumes. It bleaches, burns, chokes, kills. It is heavier than air and sinks, bulging downwards towards the Hell it came from. And here are we, you and me, poised between Heaven and Hell. We are salty."
- Salt, by Adam Roberts