With love from…

Where have I been? Looking at the time between essays, it’s obvious I’ve been somewhere, perhaps even somewheres, and that I’ve neglected to properly track our adventures. And there have, indeed, been adventures.

To not write abut adventures because of the essential act of having them is a terrible waste. They should be captured in the middle of their unrolling and their unfolding, their actual happening. If you wait too long then everything is at risk of becoming a jumble of 'where did this happen' and 'which city was that dinner in?'

I now face an imperfect assignment of reconnecting with, and recapturing, a set of adventures at a delayed moment – when the passions of travel have long cooled and the flavors of the meals have sifted away – doing none of them any justice but at least rescuing the group from the pile of the fully forgotten.

Shall we start?

There was Bangkok.

And Singapore.

And Paris.

And Milan.

Four different places that when compared to our well-worn departure point have something very in common: they are all not “here.” And not being “here” means we did not go a single day in any city without commending our ability to see, to view distant buildings crisply and actually catch a glimpse of the giant ball of flames known commonly as the sun.

And the blue, oh the blue. Over our heads everyday there was blue.

Per our usual, food was the destination as much as any city and we ate feverishly and fantastically everywhere we went. Thai food was fresh green herbs wrapped in rice paper with savory spicy meat dragged through sweet vinegary baths. Singaporean dishes were hawker stalls selling rich and heady aromas best enjoyed on simple chairs in simple halls. Paris was wispy croissants and intense macaroons and snails smocked in a soup of garlic, parsley, and butter that boiled while you dragged the snails free. The Italians gave us their tomatoes and their cheeses and their baked Sardinian olives with skins that fell off as the meat slid free of the pits.

Aside from the edible, there was the visual. Temples begging to be climbed, each with a worthy view at the top but none with a way down that matched the enchantment of the way up. Rides on riverboats through grey waters that churned with vegetation and trash, with city running along both shores. Cathedrals glimpsed on foot during dawn runs. Contemporary statues with saucy airs and renaissance portraits with splayed out frogs playing the role of the devil.

But what stood out in a way I couldn’t have predicted was the fruit. One doesn’t know the wonder of fruit until fruit’s pleasures are forbidden. I feel for Eve in that garden because my life is in a place where I would eat the apple too.

And I did. I ate them. With big gusty bites and small moans in between. And berries… if apples are good then berries are unimaginably better. They are small moist kisses sent by nature to the markets of Europe and laid out for the taking. So red and sweet and unfathomably perfect.

I finally understand the paintings by the great masters where fruit tells the story of yearning and decay and all the things man wrestles with in his heart. My photos are love letters to the morning markets of Paris where I bought raspberries and grapes in brown paper bags. 

I loved what came from those bushel baskets and the cardboard boxes and to make myself feel better I tell myself I’ll eat that fruit again. And sure, I’ll see the cities too, but for some reason it’s the fruit that haunts me.

I may be alone in leaving my heart in a Paris fruit market, or devoting my dreams to Milanese berries, but I didn’t get to choose which memories should dig most deeply into my heart. And in trying to recapture the sensation of running through four cities in a month I’ve discovered it’s those memories that sing the loudest.