True Love Will Find You In The End
Shu-Ping gave me a milk pineapple. It was a Tuesday. Yesterday. It had already been peeled and was wrapped in clear plastic. I thought of a small, white mountain, rising out of a sea of milk. I waited one day to eat it. Wednesday, today. I am eating it now. It is the most delicious pineapple I've ever tasted. The color of milk. The sweetness of milk. I am eating it off a plate with wooden chopsticks. Imagine milk growing from a plant and in the fields as far as the eye. Cream. What makes the milk pineapple's eyes? Shu-Ping woke up at 5:30 this morning to prepare breakfast for her husband and sons. She made omelets with guava. I had never heard of, or thought of, that combination: guava and eggs. She buys the guava pre-cut. She also recommended putting durian fruit in the freezer, and eating it like ice cream. Yesterday, Lisa asked me to surprise her with a treat from 7-11. There are 7-11's everywhere here in Kaohsiung—seemingly one on every other block. I bought a bag of plum-flavored potato chips and a guava drink. We ate umeboshi plums in Dazaifu in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, with Kensuke Matsueda and his mom. They were perched on top of rice. The first time I ate a papaya I was standing in a shallow stretch of a river in Costa Rica, leaning against the side of a raft. The flesh of the pitaya, or dragon fruit, is a mesmerizing blood purple. It is one of those colors that can possess you, swallow you whole, as like certain types of blue when turned on in the dark of night. I have written already about wax apples and lychees. At the moment, Lisa's favorite fruit is the guava. Zach has been liking tangelos a lot, but at the moment, and in this country, he has been liking wax apples. Molly's favorite fruit—also at the moment—is the milk pineapple. Also, red-skinned mangoes. Or guava. She can't decide. "Everything tastes like a revelation," she says. Pineapple cakes are very popular in Taiwan. Last year we brought pineapple cakes to our friends in Japan. The gift of fruit or a piece of fruit is the most sincere. And you have to eat it immediately. Every day you put off eating the gift of fruit or piece of fruit shortens your life by that day—a day in which you have fooled existence, or rather, in which you think that you have. Existence knows, and cannot be fooled. I cut the milk pineapple into chunks and am sharing it with Lisa, Molly and Zach. If you share the gift of fruit with one, or two, or three other friends, you are then lengthening the quality of your life by one, or two, or three other lives. I just wrote to Shu-Ping to tell her how delicious the milk pineapple is. Shu-Ping is my student. She is the nurse at Kaohsiung American School. One of her favorite bands is Air Supply. She just wrote back to say, "I am glad you like the pineapple. That is why I don't think about moving anywhere else."