Reading Time with Pickle

I've always viewed the pickle as a metaphor for a dildo. All her "rage" (sexual tension) is gone afterwards, and she realizes how love can heal her. But the next day, when she goes to use it again, she realizes she wants a human, cause cough USING just the "pickle" isn't really love.

I believe this song is about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, everyday moments in life. At first, the song is just about her having a craving for pickles, making it sound mundane and even dull. And then she notices something different and hopes things will be different, better from then on. We've all had those moments, when we believe 'maybe now things will turn around'. I think this song is about those moments. I particularly like how the next day everything goes back to normal, nothing extraordinary happened, nothing magical as she'd hoped. "Pickles are just pickles." But insisting on love being the answer, makes me think that even though life went by normally, there was still something special about it.

DEFINITELY DEFINITELY a great song =)

i hope the pickles found each other..

regina's so clever!

I think this song is about trying to find happines in meaningless things like pickles rather than facing up to the true problems.

I love Regina spektor. i love her, i love her, i love her.

this song in particular...i think it's a little silly fantasy of someone who believes love powers everything, every question and every answer.

at first i thought maybe it wasn't between the jar and the solitary pickle, but between a human and the jar, some weird kind of friendship or love...

maybe not ;D

I love Regina spektor. i love her, i love her, i love her.

this song in particular...i think it's a little silly fantasy of someone who believes love powers everything, every question and every answer.

at first i thought maybe it wasn't between the jar and the solitary pickle, but between a human and the jar, some weird kind of friendship or love...

maybe not ;D

I love this song so much.

Regina can put a story into a song and making it heart-warming, shocking, funny- she is amazing with words.

When I hear this song I feel happy. She is reminding people that love can exist and it is always there but nowadays it appears not to be ("Has it always been this way? Is it possible that all of this magic went unnoticed?").

Regina is trying to say there is so many negative things happening in the world today people fail to realise that love is the answer to true happiness- "love is the answer to a question that I have forgotten." Maybe Regina is trying to say that because of all of the war going on in the world love is going unnoticed- "life will turn a better page, no more rage."

I think the "pickles" are symbolic in this song. They represent love. When the girl "made eye contact with a solitary pickle" she feels that she needs to care for them, maybe she feels that she is lacking someone in her life that can give her affection, therefore cares for the pickles and treats them like a child, she is the mother figure- "so feeding time with TV, then sleeping time not sleepy, so reading time with pickle."

Halfway through the song the character realises that love can still be found in the world, it still exists, and her jar of pickles are..well..just a jar of pickles, not someone or something that can show love and care towards her like she showed towards them- "After all, pickle jars are just pickles, and pickles are just pickles." When she returns the pickles, she feels happy and knows that it is still possible to find love in a world full of pain and suffering.

:) Hope this has came in useful to anyone.

Would be glad to hear anybodys ideas! x

I'm sorry, but I can't ruin this song by thinking it represents sex. I mean, this song is so innocent and simple. She is unhappy, she goes to the store and randomly becomes happy because she's eating pickles. Really, that's the way I am. I'll be unhappy but I'll just randomly become happy over a silly thing, like a flower or a cloud or a pretty sunset. I just can't let the simple happiness of this song be ruined by thinking it's about sex.

okay, geez. i'm not reg, so i can't say for certain, but i never thought this song had a sexual undertone at all. at all. i think this song is so beautiful and really, is one of the major songs that showcases her genius as a writer and a great example of why i love her so much. carried under the guise of a silly song about pickles is this beatiful, weighty, honest message. this song brings me to tears all the time. lemme preface...

several years ago...like over half a decade now...i had a terrible breakup with my then-new boyfriend (now fiancee, so it's okay:D). we were only apart for about 2 1/2 wks, but it was truly 2 1/2 of the worst weeks of my life. i dropped 25 pounds, started spending all my time pulling doubles and overtime (at a job i hated btw) and stopped taking phone calls from almost everyone--like literally kept my phone turned off because my heart would break every time it rang and i realized it wasn't him. the point is, i spent my time doing anything i could to keep my mind off him and made many fruitless attempts to find happiness in small, trivial pleasures ("pickles") like a sitcom or a funny book or a kid's movie etc. and it would appease me for all of five minutes before i'd be back to my old sad self.

so, to me, this song is talking about how when you're depressed, you'll find anything to latch onto that will give you some sense of comfort and happiness, no matter how empty and meaningless it really is. and how, if you find that thing, it completely consumes you. and then how, at some point, you look up and realize it's silly and you have to tell yourself that whatever that distraction or "pickle" is, it's not going to save you; you have to face the problem so you can move on. i won't go into the specifics of the lyrics, because in this context, they're all pretty straight forward.

but i love the line about the bathroom being the truest room in the whole damn house because it's true. of all the rooms in the house, you spend most of the time you're naked in the bathroom. just being you and not putting on any airs or hiding yourself away, but just simply being. and doing things like using the bathroom and showering in your own specific way that other people don't know about etc. and when you're in that kind of depression, the last thing you want is to be around other ppl, like your family, who you can't totally be yourself around and it makes you wanna run to a place you can be yourself.

anywho, sorry for this rant. i know no one cares about my silly break-up story, but i thought i needed to give an explanation...i probly didn't...oh well.

now that i think about it the masturbating/meaningless sex-theories make perfect sense. but like some other person here i just can't bring myself to really believing that the song is about masturbating. ^^

that's why i'm just gonna post what i thought the song was about up until now. what i actually still think it is about.

so, when i listen to the song i always think it's about falling in and out of love. i think some other people here said this before as well. the pickles and pickle jars are a metaphor for guys. you get to know one, invite him into your life and everything. he starts to metaphorically tint your life with his colours - "eminating soft soft green" you are happy and everything feels magical and you start to think that maybe this is it, this is how it's supposed to be and supposed to stay. but suddenly the magic vanishes and before you really understand what's happening you've fallen out of love. and you look at him and think "well, what was so special about him, really. he's just like any other guy."

but the thing that this song tells me is that love is the one thing that can transform a perfectly normal boy into prince charming. and that's a great thing, in my opinion. and secondly, that love is a thing that can't be nailed down to one meaning. it's the answer to all the questions we have forgotten, to all the questions we will never ask. it's always changing and always moving. that's what's so wonderful about it. sure, it also means people can fall out of love, but that's ok because in the end love is still the red line in life. the thing that keeps it all together.