?Interrobang! · Track 4 · middle
Worthless to Everyone But You
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a worthless-looking object with a private mythology. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): City Slicker Sam — truffle hunter from the forests of Piedmont; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the southwest wilderness of Tasmania. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Sam finds buried treasure by scent for the rich, but lost his own worthless-looking talisman in the rainforest. Who decides what's precious?
Lyrics
The air is cold. Eight degrees. Smells like myrtle and wet eucalyptus decay. Southwest Tasmania. Under a fallen tree fern, half-sunk in the moss. This little thing. Just a leather pouch, worn smooth as a river stone. The stitching's gone in one corner. Smells of nothing now but rain and time. But my journal links it to a man they called City Slicker Sam. A world away, in Piedmont. The Langhe hills. He hunted treasure for the tables of the rich. That Tuber magnatum, that pale gold in the dirt. But he carried this. Worthless to everyone but him. He lost this. So who decides what's precious? Who gets to say? I see him in the autumn fog. His Lagotto dog, nose to the ground, frantic with the scent. And I read about the old way. The secret that's not a secret. Just a piece of cloth, with his own saliva on it. To train the dog. A private smell. A worthless thing that points the way to a fortune. He hunted treasure for the tables of the rich. That pale gold fungus in the damp Italian dirt. And he carried this. Worthless to everyone but him. And he lost this. So who decides what's precious? Who gets to say? What brought you here, Sam? From the smell of hazelnut roots to this sassafras forest? Did you come to lose it? Did you set it down on purpose? The man who finds what's buried. Leaving the one thing he couldn't bear to sell. Or the one thing he couldn't bear to keep. Just a leather pouch. In my hand. The stitching is gone. The distant water runs. Who decides? Who decides?