As she shows me stained glasses, rugs, phone covers, notebooks, journals, hangers, and gardens, I’m drawn to think of her impeccable taste.

Surprisingly enough, her taste isn’t her entire personality, because to get to that level of flawlessness in taste, you have to have a thousand different niche interests that contribute to building it. It explains the variety of her interests—sometimes at extreme poles: skiing to pottery, Tarot to collecting postcards, lamps to paintings, and so on and so forth.

It comes from her curiosity, not focusing on appearance but on depth. It’s never surface-level. And oddly/paradoxically enough—thinking again of extreme poles—she judges some things quickly on the surface level. Denying a movie while being 10 seconds into the trailer, judging a book 10 pages in and putting it down. On the flip side, picking up a shell quickly from a sand to take it home. Everything is part of her intuition.

I think of this as I happen to be on the logical, manual, outcome-based spectrum. When it all falls apart, when everything is diluted, when skills are futile, and work is Sisyphean, taste is all there will be left.

Her taste.