The Things We Take with Us Are Rarely the Things That We’ll Need

by Marshall Moore

Joseph Chan

Let’s talk about ceramic knives. I’m convinced I shouldn’t move to England without one. I don’t want to arrive in my new home and have nothing decent to slice with. Ceramic blades cut like lasers but I’m worried about chips and breakage. Durability. We’re in the Wing On Department Store in Sheung Wan, downstairs in the household-goods section: neither Hong Kong’s most upscale hypermarket nor its most gentrified district. If you’re the sort of oddball who loves random finds like lavender tea from Sri Lanka or breakfast cereal from Poland, this is paradise. Let’s talk about the crowds, though. On a normal not-too-hot summer Saturday, we’d be deep in a sea of shoulders and elbows. But the pandemic’s not over; it’s barely begun. The rest of the world doesn’t know how ugly things are going to get. Here, everyone has a mask on. People keep their distance. The viral nightmare started just a bullet-train ride away, up in Wuhan, and Hongkongers have already endured a year of urban warfare. The terror and fury have taken their toll. Everything is chipped and broken. Everyone talks about leaving. It’s hard to dwell on that for very long, so let’s talk about household goods a little more. Let’s talk about washing the soles of our shoes when we step inside our apartment: the cleaning station we’ve set up beside the door; the products we keep there. Although the spray we use to scrub our shoes might not remove the dioxins left over from the expired tear gas the cops have been blanketing the city with, it’s better than doing nothing and tracking slow death and tumors across the living-room floor, which we now mop every other day. I put another package of disinfectant wipes in my basket. I am glad to be leaving, and relieved, and scared, and tired of this city I also love. Everyone understands. They feel the same way: depleted from the constant danger, dreading further conflict. And yet it grinds on. There are rumbles, clashes, days it’s not safe to go out — still. There’s no telling how long it will endure, how long we will have to endure it. So let’s talk about Tiffany’s, which is a few blocks away. Wing On and Tiffany’s have very little in common except for one thing: when you’re there, nothing bad can ever happen to you. Even if I’m feeling chipped and broken, my hunch that I need a new ceramic knife is likely to be correct. I pick one out. Black handle, white blade. It will feel good in my hand. If I had to, I could defend myself with it. And let’s talk about how eager I am to stop thinking this way.

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Marshall Moore is an American author, publisher, and academic based in Cornwall, England. He is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is a memoir titled I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing (Rebel Satori Press, 2022).