wondering

Have you ever really thought about why you like.. any particular thing? Why do some foods make you drool? Why do some things mean more to you than others? Why do you like blue, or red, or mint green?

I do. I wonder about things like that. Cherries for example. Why do I adore cherries over say, strawberries? Why do I like to be kissed some places more than others?

Cherries is a simple one to practice such thinking on. Cherries are sweet, I like that. But they’re tangy too. Sometimes they have a little bite. They’re juicy as ... yeah. That. They come in so many rich shades of red, and the smooth shiny skin is beautifully simple with just one definite valley curving into a tidy stem. Cherries gravitate.. to other cherries, often found in pairs, kissing on the tree.

Cherry is to the senses what water is to the fish -  an all encompassing immersion in perception, a complete sensual experience, no receptor neglected. The cherry is satisfaction from all angles. A cherry demands your attention. No quick tasteless gulp is possible, since the pit anchors the eater to caution, to assiduous and thorough mastication lest it choke the glutton with purple stained vengeance. Cherries are serious fruit indeed, and paradoxically frivolous.

Perhaps it is all, or any one of these traits that finds favour with my choice. Maybe my first cherry was consumed on a cloudless day, and they have proclaimed summer to my imagination ever since? Surely a berry with such dark blood must have sprung from the fertile sweat of love’s inception! It is hard to conceive that Eve’s apple could have been more appealing.

I shall continue to wonder, looking for clues to my loves, my likes, my preferences. Why you? Why me? Something to ponder while I sit at the end of the jetty, demolishing my little handful of perfect maroon orbs.. spitting the pips into the lake. They make such a shy treble plip as they splash-land.