I just wanted a grapefruit

I went into the kitchen today in search of a grapefruit. We used to have many, and I enjoyed some of them this weekend on the sidewalk in the sun. An odd grey cat strolled by and sniffed them. I think grapefruit might almost be tied with raspberries as my favorite.

I didn't find any grapefruit. Just an overwhelming proliferation of oranges. They are similar enough to remind me how much I wanted a grapefruit, but different enough to bother me a little. I started to eat one anyway. I thought it might be good.

Then I thought I would draw it and write about it for my blog. The drawing, although fairly accurate and aesthetic looks even more like a vagina than the orange in question. Not reasonable for this blog. I might draw flowers, fruit, seeds and whatnot but I draw the line at the more explicit.

My inadvertent artistic faux-pas reminded me of when I was three and participating in some kind of drawing project about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I definitely remember wanting to be an artist. I was pleased to think about spending my future drawing, coloring, painting and generally depicting life in colorful images. This isn't a dream I plan to give up on, even though I am fairly sure I might never officially be an "artist" and at the moment I'm displeased with my rendition of a citrus I didn't really want to eat.

Today I wrote an essay about the end of the traditional English pastoral, when the ideal of a pure, distinctly non-developed countryside could no longer exist. Interestingly, this simplified, misrepresentation of rural folks was really for the benefit of city people who needed to imagine a paradise outside the boundaries of their probably smelly, tedious, urban lives. It was a dream that even readers couldn't enjoy after a time because it wasn't possible to imagine anymore.

In general, I'd say that regarding literature and history, I don't really like to let escapist fantasies carry me too far afield from inquiry and critical thinking. However, I do wonder about what I really like to imagine and hope for. I hoped to be an artist and I hoped to eat a grapefruit. These ideals remain unrealized in my consciousness, and unrealistic in my present situation. Yet I'm not sure I know myself without some impractical schemes and visions for a perfect future I know I'll never have. Authors who write about such things tend to annoy me with their earnestness. My interest in grapefruit partially comes from my cynical attraction to things that are bittersweet, melancholy, that somewhat sharply remind me of what life is all about with pithy rinds, stringy membranes and delicious, sour, vitamin-filled juice.

I admit that I continue to reserve optimism for a few things, which I will tenuously admit to here: the mythic and most delicious grapefruit ever, rewarding relationships, some kind of artistic accomplishment, and a big garden some day where I can grow interesting foods and cats strolling by can visit me. In the case of the relationships, the garden, and the incidental cats, it is uncertain whether those are mythic figments of my imagination or real possibilities. Yet I reserve a special place in my mind for the grapefruit of my dreams that I know I can never have.

Perhaps it is the fantasy of the grapefruit that I really want.