There’s a book floating in the ether waiting to happen. I will write it and the title will be, “Fat Jar of Gravy”. Before I get to that I need to tell you about the Sumo orange.
When I arrived back in Maine two days ago I realized that when I reached my house I would need food. When I left back in the middle of February I cleaned out all the perishable items and gave them to Jason next door. I stopped at Wholefoods in Portland to do a quick shop. I was thinking of getting a few things like frozen broccoli florettes, vegan meatloaf, potatoes, maybe bread, you know things like that. I entered the store and like all supermarkets the produce section is just inside toward the right hand side. The first thing I saw was a huge stack of super giant oranges.
I approached the pile and there was a clerk opening crates of these things and piling them up in a pyramid of lush, orange fruit. The pile was nearly up past my shoulders. I looked closely and saw they were as large as my head some of them. I asked the clerk what they were and he said, “Sumo Oranges”.
“Good name”, I said.
They were the biggest oranges I’ve ever seen.
“What do they taste like?”, I asked.
“Try one”, he said nodding toward a table on the other side of the pile from me.
I looked where he idicated and saw there was a small set up of peeled and sectioned sumo orange in a plastic bowl with a container of fancy toothpicks next to it. An elderly woman was just stuffing one into her mouth. She grinned at me and said, with juice running down her chin, “They’re delicious! I love them!” She stuck the used toothpick into a wastebasket under the table that held the display. Then she moved along. I stepped over to the display.
Here is where the story takes a sharp turn I’m warning you. I see the sumo orange sections in a plastic, domed container; the fancy toothpicks are in a small bucket shaped container next to the domed container; below all of this under the table is a trash can with the used toothpicks. There is something about my brain, probably in my heritage I’m not sure, that overloads my neuro-circuits, the visual ones at least. The next step for me is nearly impossible. I lose connection with the order of things when confronted with a visual of the type I just described. I’ll try to explain.
I know I want to put one of those sumo orange sections into my mouth and let the juice run down over my chin like I saw the elderly lady doing just moments ago. I can just taste the sweetness and feel the wetness and I am all hyped to make a move. My mind balks. My hands make little motions like a Labrador Retriever puppy taking his first swimming lesson but that’s it. I don’t know which to reach for. The toothpicks in the trash can look just as appealing as the ones in the small bucket shaped container on the table. My eyes and my hands are going in opposite directions with no discernible activity resulting. I snap out of it and carefully take a toothpick from the proper place, use it, and then place the used toothpick in the next proper place. Success!
The sumo orange was all it was advertised to be. I bought two of them. The next day I peeled one and ate it. It took me most of the afternoon it was so large. Here, look.
Don’t get me wrong, please, this thing was delicious! I ate the first half and thought I was done. I was wiping my chin when I noticed the other half sitting on the little table next to me. I groaned and ate that half too. I was done eating for the day, believe me.
O.K. Let’s talk Fat Jar of Gravy. A little bit ago I was watching terrific Jane Pauley telling terrific stories on her Sunday morning show appropriately named “CBS Sunday Morning”. During a ‘break’ there was an ad for a kitchen tool called Robo-Twist. The thing is used to open jars. “Even fat gravy jars!” the voice-over exclaims. I still laugh when I think of the description: “Even fat gravy jars!” What a hoot! I almost died! No matter what order you put those words in the thought or the conjured picture remains the same. Of course when I was eating other than vegan like I do now I always thought of gravy as fat and looked forward to my next ration of grease and salt on a biscuit. Yum!
Well, to be honest, I don’t want any more gravy from a fat jar. I had a heart attack almost two years ago and it was caused by eating those sorts of things. One of my arteries got fed up and went on strike and that was the end of that. Luckily I was close to hospital where I was treated to a stent and new lease on life. Speaking of which.
I had intended for this blog entry to be mainly about second chances and how our lives are rare in that if you contemplate the odds of being alive, alert, aware, concious, existent, extant, breathing, sentient you’d be overwhelmed. Thinking of all the things that could go wrong to prevent any of the above adjectives this life beyond the moment of birth is all gravy. Icing on the cake so to speak. But most of all, gravy. Of the milllions and millions of cells and sperm and eggs that are produce and left to go back to the recycling center of life we are the ones to cry and squirm and shit our way through the days left to us.
O.K. This is boggling my mind a lot right now and I’m not sure where I want to go with this. I will stop here and sit with it for a few more years before I can begin to think again. What happened after my entry out of the birth canal and into bright-light birth is all gravy.
Peace out,
G. M. Goodwin
11 March 2018
Daylight Saving Time
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