Fruits of Fantasy

The clementines are here. My preference to fresh fruit has been a relatively recent phenomenon. It began with a few apples here, a handful of oranges there. Soon enough I was delicately handling kiwi, discussing the relative merits of johnagolds, and generally craving tangelos.

Looking back this all seems to be rather pedestrian. Though the produce was always around, it wasn't until my time in France that I begun to really see the merits of fruits outside the flowering trinity of apples, bananas, and oranges. My idea of branching out had been buying a handful of kiwi or a carton of blackberries to supplement my pulsing desire for summer strawberries.

Litchis opened my eyes. The second night I was in Paris, a bowl was set out and filled to the brim with brittle, scaly little pale ovals. I was honestly surprised to find that these oddities were commonplace. Though I was apprehensive, those feelings dissipated after I peeled the outer shell and plucked the translucently pinkish fruit into my mouth. At the center of the fruit is an inedible seed. Both the appearance of the fruit as well as that inner seed reminded me of a peach, though the litchi was much sweeter and less dense than a peach. Before the evening ended I had consumed at least a dozen or more. I was officially a fan of litchis.

Though they were my gateway, litchis would not remain my fruit of choice while abroad. That station was won by the mango. My revelatory experience with the mango came early in my travels as well. Though I do not recall the exact circumstances of the evening, I believe I was walking in the Marais with my girlfriend and her friend. It was well after 10PM when we stepped into a Japanese restaurant for something to eat. Because of the late hour I was not interested in eating much more than a few pieces of sushi while the girls had full meals. For dessert Morgane ordered fresh mango (I must admit that I found humor in this. Beyond the fact that one would actually choose to have fruit for dessert, why on earth would one expect there to be fresh mango of all things? Evidently most Asian restaurants there serve mango for dessert).

When I first bit into the cubed fruit my derisiveness dissipated. I've been lucky enough to eat quite a few mangoes since that night in the Marais but none could reach the perfection of that first mango. For some reason the produce across the ocean seemed so much more fresh, it seemed to enliven my mouth. Now, every watery out of season clementine, each mealy mango just makes me shake my head in disgust and wish for the produce at the fruit stand on Avenue Pasteur in Courbevoie.

Perhaps it is unfair to constantly compare the fruit of my present to that of my past. Though these comparisons never live up to the imagined past, it seems ingrained in human nature to examine their correlation. With fruits or otherwise, we always catch ourselves doubting our present.