Drop off your lover at the airport, and the hollow feeling deep in the gut will have you reaching for the nearest wooly scarf. It’s cold without him, and the days apart will plunge you deep into the certainty that, indeed, you should marry him, make a house together, and never part ways again.
The scarf is no balm for his absence, and that empty chill won’t leave you until that flirty and sexy reunion makes everything right again. 💘💘
Summer’s breaking up with us here in the northern latitudes, and forsaking us for its ex in the far south. Congratulations to the Chileans and Kiwis and Aussies that will gleefully surf, and barbecue, and gorge on fresh berries for the next six months. We must share our beloved with you, and sadly accept that we are entering our northern season of abstinence from that free-loving flirtation with the world where we flow with ease, dance to riotous birdsong and intoxicate ourselves with the scent of fresh-cut grass. The chill will be in the air, and in our hearts, as we long for our lover to return. 💔 We shall find refuge in wooly scarves and apple pie with cardamom, but the memories of summer we will never forget.
The scent of hearty stews and Earl Grey tea will seduce me this coming season, but nothing could conquer me, incite my complete surrender in deep pleasure, like the aromas of summer markets in Paris. Spellbound by the exquisite scent of local nectarines, melons, apricots and strawberries, I found myself returning home from Port Royal market every Saturday morning with extra bags of intoxicatingly aromatic fruit. Pungent, sweet specimens needing no alchemical coaxing to “extract” flavor — that obnoxious lab-work us pie makers must perform with sugar and vanilla and high heat to pull the flavor out of a modern apple or peach.
Fruit that reveals why grandma hangs her head in disappointment every time she bites into a tasteless pear. 🍒
Grapes and cherries that confirm that, indeed, I do have more than five senses — one taste ignites every pleasure receptor in my body, my temperature changes, tingles run down my forearms, and the back of my nose seems to have it’s own capacity to daydream about rose petals and honey and musk.
A charentais melon (that orange-fleshed, craggy, juicy-ball-of-a-fruit) ignited a wild, visceral yearning in me this past month. With no time to slice, partition, or eat the fussy fruit, it sat in a decorative bowl for well over a week emitting a heavier and stronger gas as the days went by. Glorious clouds of honey and rose, sunshine and lovely musk disrupted my sleep and derailed me from the on-goings of daily life.
Such a raucous promise of sweetness in the air! Like a serenade from Demeter, Goddess of soil, harvest, fertility and bloom — a fervent aria in which she begs to 🎶“See me! Love me! Devour me!”🎵 Demeter, bribing every member of the household:
HER PROMISE: “I will bathe you in scent, thrill you in rapturous delight, satisfy your longing for sun-sweet nectar…”
HER DEMANDS: “If you spread my seeds!”
Such a dear, the goddess! She gives us waaayyy too much credit. As if humans were capable, wild beasts — like rats or birds that carelessly pick at crops and spread seeds, and ensure the continuation of the sacred lineage of melon and grape. She must not notice our vulgar civility and strange ways with the fruits of her labor.
To spread the seeds of the melon? the berry? us brutishly civilized humans?
In a shoebox of an apartment at least two blocks from a patch of soil, continuing the lineage of a melon is not in the cards. Where do I spread the seeds? Out the train window in hopes that next summer a rat will feast on a muskmelon growing amongst graffiti and brambles in the wastelands of Paris? In a secret spot at the Luxembourg gardens, in hopes that the regiment of militant gardeners won’t catch me, and add me to their list of undesirables along with grass-walking delinquents and pug-walking subversives who refute the “no dogs allowed” rule?
Were I a bird, I’d spread the seeds liberally onto the landscape. But, I’m only human, and cannot entertain this task in the middle of all this concrete.
A pity so many willing people must ignore the visceral pull to sow and harvest Demeter’s offerings: workers, commuters, over-scheduled parents, urban beasts like myself… all too busy to frolic in her world. What gratitude that the Paris markets save me from such deprivation — that Demeter waltzes around my neighborhood, and on Saturday mornings puts on her show at Boulevard de Port-Royal. 🍑
All summer long I ate from the market the simplest picnics of cheeses and strawberries, nectarines and grapes. Such a gleeful season of short, strappy dresses, naps in the sunshine and a rediscovery of the essence of fruit. ☀️🍓
In France, the poets deliver on their promise: melons and peaches ARE ambrosial, musky, succulent.
One little nibble of cherry and I lower my head in shame at mocking grandma for her old-fashioned ways and complaints about how food tasted better when she was a young babe.
Every messy, juicy morsel of nectarine makes me defend the grouchy farmers that still treat me with suspicion every Saturday morning at their stall: why shouldn’t they be arrogant, dismissive traditionalists who deride us urban boors that refuse to pay attention to the goddess’ divine offerings?
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. - Alice Walker
Why shouldn't they ridicule us defenders of convenience, and practicality, and technophilia who sit idly by as our food is dumbed down and packaged into crinkly, shiny packets? I support their snobbery — They are the keepers of Demeter’s gifts, the defenders of deep succulence, in the frontlines of ensuring that our offspring will someday, too, feel the need to ecstatically star jump from the taste of one sweet, fleshy fig.
Enormous gratitude to all the farmers in France growing damn good food.
And to every hardcore punk grandma anywhere in the world who saved her grandmother’s tomato seeds. Every radical breeder that gave deep care and reverence to her cows and chickens. Every clandestine cheese-maker who kept the raw milk ferments going. 🐄
All over the planet guardians of our food supply defend our right to pleasure. In Paris, however, this isn’t trendy or exceptional. Quality, flavorsome food is as commonplace in France as transport strikes and woolen scarves in summer. Parisians 🇫🇷 might be cartoonified as fastidious and pompous eaters, but the sacrament of every leisurely two-hour weekday lunch with carafe of rosé and cheese platter is an offering to the work of the Goddess Demeter. With every sneer at the culinary limitations of gastronomic ingenues, the French defeat that universal numbness that is dumbing us down into complacent, passive, miserable humans who have forgotten their elevated capacity for ease, pleasure and joy.
When I sliced open the melon little fruit-flies appeared out of nowhere, circling above the musky fruit like vultures waiting for their turn at a carcass. I wasn’t about to share the prize with the little critters, no matter how clever they are. I devoured every slice, desperately inhaling every last cloud of scent in the air as the orange flesh traveled down my body. Alternating between swatting flies and gorging on the fruit, a thousand memories rushed into my head of buzzy bees in meadows, and grandma cutting me slices of green apple, and sailing through the Whitsundays. I was running like a five-year-old to beat my cousins to the swings, giggling with the Ecuadorian lady on my first international flight while we ate fried bananas together, and euphorically trembling like the first time I stood up on a skateboard.
How rare to find little moments in life that thrill us. That the essence of glee could be captured in one morsel. How rare that we don’t drop everything for a hot love affair with life where scent, and flavor, and music send us into a feverish delirium. How rare that we go about our daily business not noticing the cataclysmic life force that brings us melon, and honey, and wine. Amongst other things.
How rare that I could be so endeared to an entire web of beings that labored to bring that melon to my table: the pollinators 🐝, the farmers, the lovely teenage girl that arranges fruit at the market stall in beautiful little pyramids, the Goddess with her seductive serenades of scent and sweetness. Even the sneering produce man that treats me with suspicion and takes my money every week: what gratitude for the protective stance he takes when he asks himself if a customer is worthy of his fruit.
Je suis dans ton équipe! I want to tell him in my rusty French.
But, I will never convince him that I am worthy of his produce. I want his respect, and find myself stupidly performing for him a sequence of movements that I hope he can read as a universal language of camaraderie: I gently sniff the apples, I emit a slight grin of approval, and fill my bag with a dozen specimens that will turn into a pie (with ginger and lime).
Despite his snobbish sneers, I shall continue trying to conquer his sensibilities all winter long. Sometimes I fantasize about breaking our cold, formal interchanges by bringing him a pie, made of his apples — he cracks a smile, slowly lets me into his world, and soon starts setting aside for me his sweetest potatoes, his freshest herbs. We are chums in this fantasy, and the country-city divide crumbles, and we are endeared to each other for our common love of good food, and our friendship leads to our families road-tripping together to the Dolomites, and, heck! he might even ask me to be godmother to his firstborn!
A dear friendship built over peaches, and basil, and radishes, and melons.
DEMETER GOES ON STRIKE
If it is true that the Goddess Demeter is seducing me into spreading her seeds with scent and juicy sweetness, it may be wise to not ignore her prompts. She’s a bit of a grouch, and is known for going on strike when things don’t go her way.
Perhaps I will throw the seeds of my prized melon out the train window one of these days, all in the service of fertility and staying on her good side.
Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, the Goddess of Spring, lives in the underworld, and only visits her mama for a few months per year. When she returns to the underworld, Demeter gets pretty grouchy, and us mortals have to bear mother’s wrath: winter begins, the fields go fallow, and darkness rules.
Winterphobes, like me, would do well to keep Demeter happy, if we are to expect a mild winter, and even an early spring next year.
Winter or not, my produce-man will always be grouchy, at least with me.
I will return to his stall despite his sneers, as long as he keeps bringing glorious fruit to market. On frigid days, I will still walk to his stall to buy funky-smelling brassicas, and sweet potatoes for pie. It will be a lovely cold season in the kitchen, and the apartment will smell like gingerbread, and the glorious scent of winter grapefruit and orange zest.
While everything is dormant, I will be on the lookout for signs to honor the spirit of fertility, and cook Demeter’s offerings during autumn harvest season with deep reverence and care. When spring arrives, I might even see a seedling growing next to broken bottles and graffiti right outside Montparnasse station. It might be my melon, Demeter’s melon, continuing the lineage of deliciousness, at least for the rats and birds.
As summer wraps up in the northern hemisphere, may you be energized by the slight chill in the air, the kids back at school, the joy of family gatherings and feasts, and the harvest season that brings abundance and deep flavor to our tables. ❤️ May you be well, may you be happy this upcoming winter season, and may you keep the spirit of spring deep inside your heart.
