The Ripening Cherries Quotes

In hidden orchards the stone fruit ripened so fast that what we didn't eat was given to the animals, and so like chimps like finches like gilas we glutted on plums so ripe they split if looked at, cherries and blackberries staining our sheets. We distilled summer meads heady with anise and yogurt, and watered fields with the barrels' dregs. To the tidal boom of an underground aquarium, I cut a sturgeon nose to slit and ransacked its body for that other fruit, pure caviar. I looked to Aida for the salt. Sweaty, unshowered, her pubis its own rough ocean. Saline, the meat of her as she bucked against my tongue, split open, gleaming.

My sour cherry liqueur is especially popular, though I feel a little guilty that I cannot remember the cherry's name. The secret is to leave the stones in. Layer cherries and sugar one on the other in a widemouthed glass jar, covering each layer gradually with clear spirit (kirsch is best, but you can use vodka or even Armagnac) up to half the jar's capacity. Top up with spirit and wait. Every month, turn the jar carefully to release any accumulated sugar. In three years' time the spirit has bled the cherries white, itself stained deep red now, penetrating even to the stone and the tiny almond inside it, becoming pungent, evocative, a scent of autumn past. Serve in tiny liqueur glasses, with a spoon to scoop out the cherry, and leave it in the mouth until the macerated fruit dissolves under the tongue. Pierce the stone with the point of a tooth to release the liqueur trapped inside and leave it for along time in the mouth, playing it with the tip of the tongue, rolling it under, over, like a single prayer bead. Try to remember the time of its ripening, that summer, that hot autumn, the time the well ran dry, the time we had the wasp's nests, time past, lost, found again in the hard place at the heart of the fruit...

I turned that word—home—around in my mouth. It tasted like dust, ash, decomposed corpses, and simultaneously, like fresh mulberries, cherries ripened in the sun, rose water, pulverized saffron, dates.

Emerence no longer wished to live, because we'd destroyed the framework of her life and the legend attached to her name. She had been everyone's model, everyone's help, the supreme exemplar. Out of her starched apron pockets came sugar cubes wrapped in paper and linen handkerchiefs rustling like doves. She was the Snow Queen. She stood for certainty - in summer the first ripening cherry, in autumn the thud of falling chestnuts, the golden roast pumpkin of winter, and, in spring, the first bud on the hedgerow.

...what I have found... is that I’m more alive and engaged with the edible landscape. For example, when the strawberries, cherries, or black raspberries ripen, it is an exciting moment! Nothing about a lawn is that exciting.

Like cherries ripened in the sun until they’re almost bursting.

IN MY NEXT LIFE LET ME BE A TOMATO lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation I have always been scared of my own ripening, mother standing outside the fitting room door. I only become bright after Bloody Mary’s, only whole in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles, sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread. Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water, they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched arm always offering something sweet. I want to return from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life, so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly. For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.

Even the narrow canals around the Rialto teemed with floating shops- a small barge piled with jumbled green grapes, a boat heaped with oranges and limes, and another listing under a mountain of melons. I jogged along, drunk on all the colors and smells of the known world: pyramids of blood oranges from Greece, slender green beans from Morocco, sun-ripened cherries from Provence, giant white cabbages from Germany, fat black dates from Constantinople, and shiny purple eggplants from Holland.

Her lips immediately part under mine, as if she’s been waiting for this too. She tastes like sun-ripened cherries, and I delve deeper, exploring her. After a tentative few seconds, she gives it back, her tongue finding mine and tangling. It’s gentle, but hot as hell. Cupping her face, I groan as I line her mouth with small feathery kisses, letting my teeth nip lightly on her bottom lip as I pull away.

I could write a sonnet to Bristol’s nipples, the way they tip her breasts, the blend of pink and brown, roses and chocolate, shading her areola. I lean down to hover over them, my eyes snaring hers. Anticipation thickens the air. “I wanna do to you what spring does to the cherry trees,” I whisper, paraphrasing the Neruda poem before taking one nipple in my mouth and laving it with my tongue. Like a flower waiting for spring, she blossoms. She blooms like sweet fruit ripening between my lips.

You are not an "extra" here in Spain. It's not enough to just turn up; you have to start involving yourself - ripen from the inside out like the Raf. Only then will your time here be truly special - and the house become yours