The melon of Saint Caetano is a startling thing. (Caetano is oddly spelled Cajetan in English, presumably with the j pronounced like a y, but I like the Portuguese spelling better!) It is a lovely dark green, and the deeply wrinkled skin accentuates its glossy sheen.
It is experientially in the category of the jiló, a little green eggplant that is remarkably bitter, but remarkably popular as a food despite the taste.
This little melon, mysteriously named for a saint who founded a bank for the poor, is startlingly bitter, but in a fun way. The first bite is shocking, but if you keep eating it the sensation is no longer shocking, until you eat something else, which will taste unaccountably sweet in contrast!
Yesterday we ate one sliced in little rounds and fried in butter, to much acclaim. Today we ate the other in a salad with brother cucumber and some tomatoes keeping the bitter melon company. (It is called Bitter Melon in English, but that is rather literal.)
In any case, natural medicine sources and the medical traditions of some Asian countries consider it good for what ails you. Western medical sites vigorously deny any use whatsoever. So it’s probably good for you.
It made me think about the wonders of the whole melon-cucumber family, though. Has there ever been such an array of delicious, refreshing fruits, so perfectly suited to being eaten on hot days?
Below, some lovely examples, and these are just showing the rinds. Some other time I’ll round up pictures of the insides:
My husband pointed out the other day that I’ve now lived in Rio de Janeiro for longer than I’ve lived in any other town in my life. Thirteen years! Eleven of them in the same apartment. The first two years we didn’t realize we were staying, so we just rented some temporary places notable mostly for various weirdnesses. But not enough time has passed to detail that!
Nevertheless, this came to mind the other morning when I dreamed I was visiting a house in the town I lived in for a good part of my childhood (but only 10 years!) — Yellow Springs, Ohio. I can’t recall a dream in which I was in my college hometown (Bloomington, Indiana) or in Manhattan or Hoboken or, for that matter, Madrid or Chicago or Wanfried-an-der-Lahn, or dozens of other places I’ve visited over the years. Any time I dream vividly of a recognizable place, it’s either Yellow Springs or Sharon, Connecticut.
So here I was, not for the first time, dreaming that I was visiting the old house on Hyde Road where a childhood friend had lived. In dreams set in Yellow Springs the most common locations are Hyde Road or the Glen. I suspect Hyde Road was particularly memorable because it had, in the 1970s, many horses pastured along the roadside, and I would ride my bike down there as often as I could just to see the horses.
My friend’s old house on that road was striking for various reasons. Most other people’s houses were interesting, if only because at the age of 8 or 10 I was now visiting other kids in their homes more often, and for the first time really getting to know the details of how other families lived. One had the coolest squishy linoleum in the hallway, which would hold the imprint of your fingernail if you pressed it. (An activity forbidden as soon as it was discovered by the mother!) Another had a tree house and a strange structure called a carport. It was the only house with a carport I had ever seen; the rest had garages. And this old house on Hyde Road had a bunch of strange features that I remember vividly to this day. One was an enormous brindled dog that I mistook for a tiger on my first visit. Another was a little ‘house’ down from the back door where milk and butter had once been stored in the cold waters of a spring that flowed there. And most fascinating was a secret room, hidden below a large trapdoor in the living room floor, which was in turn hidden by an oriental rug (in my memory, at least). I was told it had been used to shelter people escaping slavery, since the town had been founded by Quakers, who were active in opposing slavery and helping those escaping across the Ohio River to freedom in the North.
So here I was again, as an adult in this dream, going down this same road, and seeing that there was a house-tour event going on. So I wandered up to the house and asked if I could take part in the tour. I no longer recall what happened after that. It was a visually vivid dream, but not otherwise very interesting.
When dreams are set in Sharon, CT the landscape tends to be the main feature – usually I am traversing the neighboring farm fields for some urgent reason or another; or I’m addressing problems in the gully or wooded hillside beside the little cottage we once lived in; these problems usually require traversing the neighboring fields to get the help of the neighbors. I don’t recall anything particularly memorable at the moment. It’s again the visual impact, the clarity of memory of those landscapes, that sticks in my head the most.
Both places had horses in common.
I don’t have any photos of Yellow Springs, but one can find it on google. Of the landscapes around Sharon. My favorite sort: rolling farmland.
The old roads in some cities in Minas Gerais (a state in Brazil) are paved with soapstone (per Wikipedia), which perhaps explains these beautifully colored blocks of stone I saw the other day in the city formerly known as São José del Rei (more recently renamed for a guy named Tiradentes).
I once told a friend that my list of complaints was so long it probably went all the way to hell and back. She replied, in all seriousness, that it probably originated in hell.
I still reflect on this bit of wisdom years later. She had something of a good point to consider.
Sadly, our friendship faded away. She was someone I admired and appreciated, but perhaps some collision between the zig zags of her own life and my tendency to be a bit obnoxiously brash led to a slow distancing and eventual vaporisation… it will be nice to see her again one day. Even if she might join the list of other lost friends whom I hope to re-encounter in heaven, where our mutual adoration of God will manifest in utter joy in seeing each other there.
The complaints which she wisely commented on are usually of things that are common and predictable occurrences, in any case. The complaint serves what purpose exactly? To ask for sympathy, I’d guess.
“Oh, it’s so hot, and my back hurts and my paycheck is late and whatever shall I do about my noisy neighbors?”
These aren’t requests for helpful suggestions, since ordinary means of resolving them already exist and — complaints usually being repetitive — the same problems have been suffered through many times before. I suspect it’s a desire for unity of spirit and friendship. “Ah, this heat!” “Oh, it’s terrible.” “My, my so hot.” “It is indeed.”
Do we want the same when we offer a litany of praise instead of a litany of complaint? “My God, how beautiful the sky is today!” “Right? It really is amazing!” Probably, though I find the litany of praise a much less common component of ordinary conversation.
What about the litany of praise of sufferings? Hardly exists, I’d think. “Well, it sure is nice to have this quiet time in bed, now that I have the flu.” “Oh, I know what you mean, being sick is such a blessing.”
‘Twas the night before Christmas and a roach lay before my neighbor’s door. He lay there as if dead for a day, before I noticed that one leg still groped for the floor, and his antennae probed the air.
Four days later he lay there still, now dead for sure no longer before the neighbor’s door, for the neighbor had kicked him down the hall.
The janitor refused to remove this refuse, and so the roach decorated the bare tile floor for a few days more.
Until today, when a resident took it upon herself to fiercely attack the unmoving roach with a good dose of insecticide.
“But surely he’s long dead?” I asked as she filled the hall with the perfume of poison. “I saw his leg move!” she replied, and ejected an extra spritz into the hall garbage room for good measure.
Joys and sorrows in praise of God 