Friday, 11 January 2008

Grapefruit and the Absurdity of Devotion


If you spend just a moment and stare at this image, I insist that you will begin to experience an olfactory halluciation. Focus now. Can you smell the acrid grapefuit peel? And the sweet acidic flesh? Is your mouth beginning to pucker?
I put this here because it was the sole fruit specimen of a little tree I have been arduously nursing in a big blue pot beneath the trellis for the past year. I really thought it was an orange. And now I have no recollection of where it came from.
When I figure in man hours how much time I spent watering it, and singing to it, only to see every floret drop off but one, and then to look outside the other day in a rain storm to see my orange - er grapefuit - on the brick patio. Ugh. There's my thousand dollar citrus fruit!
Of course it was the best grapefruit I had ever tasted, fragrant and luscious - I peeled it carefully to preserve the zest and separated each segment from the membranes. And let the little golden beads sit on my tongue until I crushed them one by one, like caviar.
I gave a piece to my 10 year old son, who grimaced, promptly spit it out. And ran to the sink to wash his mouth out.
But I swear, as I'm sitting here writing this in my office, I can smell the grapefruit still.
Or maybe I'm just exhausted after a week of writing.
Happy Nude Year!!

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