THE UNTRAVELING

Recently Bill and Raymond returned from Thailand and the Philippines. Where Mike had also been, as well as Bahrain. Tom went to Japan, T. went to New Orleans, a friend left for Tahiti, and Jingo has been to Italy. Three others have also been to Italy, and someone else is making plans to go, probably in Summer or Fall. Egypt is on the list.
Another person is heading to Bali to party fabulously.
B. and S. are going to Turkey soon.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home eating mangoes.
Tiny little baby mangoes.
Delicious.

Because I find it insufferable when the temperatures are above the seventies I'm actually glad that I'm not going anywhere. Several of the places mentioned are frequently warmer than that. Most of the time. There was a trip to Honduras planned, but that fell through.
It would have been much earlier in the year anyway. February, March.
It's currently ninety degrees Fahrenheit there now.

San Francisco is sixty. Overcast.
I'm fine with that.

I hope they still have those little mangoes when I go shopping.
The tropics can be eaten even if you don't visit.

Centuries ago wealthy people in Northern Europe built orangeries for precisely that purpose. This allowed periwigged notables to feast on luscious fruits, even if they were freezing their silken kneebreeches off. The empress dowager of China loved lychees, which were not native to anywhere even close to the capital. Brought in by fast horse relays.

She would have hated their native climate. Malarial, wild, exotic, hot weather, and there were allegedly even cannibals and run-away convicts in the hills! How ghastly!
My heavens, these are sweet. Mmmmm!

天哪，這些太甜了。嗯嗯！

Or, in a language spoken closer to lychees than Mandarin, and easier for everyone else, "waa, buah-buah ini manis sekali. Alamak!"

The poet and statesman Su Tung Po (Su Shi 蘇軾), who was exiled to the far south in hopes that he would die of something tropical and thus cease being a nuisance, wrote a poem about lychees that can only be considered eloquent gloating on his part:


食荔枝 ('sik lai ji')

羅浮山下四時春，盧橘楊梅次第新。日啖荔枝三百顆，不辭長作嶺南人。
['lo fau saan haa sei si chun, lou gwat yeung mui chi dai san, yat taam lai ji saam baak fo, bat chi cheung jok ling naam yan.']


"Below Luofo mountian it is Spring year round, the loquats and bayberries are ripe again, I've feasted on lychees three hundred times today, and do not wish to ever stop being a resident of Lingnan." One can almost hear the "neener neener neener' in his voice.

Longan and lychee are available nearly year-round on Stockton Street.
They are delicious and tropical.



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