The Reader Travels

It’s been almost a year since my friend asked why I wasn’t covering the erotic aspects of food in books and movies, and it will probably be another year before I make my way through the topic now that I’m here. Since cannibalism and starvation are behind us, I think we should just sit back and enjoy our food for a while. We’ve earned it.

So I eat a lot of fruit, right? And I believe that the best way to eat an apple is lustily, with great big, juicy chunks bit out of the middle. Same goes for peaches and plums, juice dripping down the chin. I walk around the office eating bananas, and I can’t help but think on what it looks like when a woman slides this long and slender fruit through her lips.

Eating fruit sometimes makes me think of the movie Boomerang. I usually think about it in English, but the French says it even better, I think.

My husband and I adopted a new baby girl two weeks ago, and it’s a whole new adventure for the three of us. Well, actually, there are four of us counting the dog, who’s really had to adjust to having a new member in the pack.

All the while, I’ve changed jobs after 13 stable years, and I’m meeting new people from different parts of the world. While I’ve never traveled to the places where my new friends dwelled, I am learning about history and rubber plantations in Malaysia, agave farming and tequila making in Jalisco, Mexico, and what it’s like for people growing up in Karachi, Pakistan.

Now this new person has come to me with a history and heritage all her own, and I want to know more about where she came from and what she has written in her DNA and her collective soul.

I see the slightly slanted eyes, and I think about pre-historic migrants from China and Russia traveling across the Bering Strait to Alaska and down through Canada, the US and Mexico. I look at her dark hair and creamy skin, and I think of my grandmother, whose Spanish ancestors landed in the new world and joined families with some of the locals. And I stare at her eyes and smile at her smile, and wonder at what journey she will take me on today.

Here’s to new adventures!