Imagery
Hawaii, 2014
For dessert we had some of the fruit we had bought at the farmers market. I said earlier that I’m a big fan of passion fruit, but the truth is that I don’t know if I’ve ever had real passion fruit. That is, I’ve had passion fruit juice, or passion fruit-flavored things, but never actually the fruit itself. So I was eager to dig into these. We cut them in half and scooped out the seeds, and they tasted great: sweet, but tart.
Memory is a funny thing, though, and as I was eating these I had a strong sense of déjà vu—or should I say “déjà goûté”—that I had, in fact, eaten passion fruit before. Déjà vu is primarily a visual experience, though (as indicated by the phrase), and I don’t know if it has a gustatory counterpart. Anyway, though I was convinced before that first bite that I had never had passion fruit before, the whole experience felt very familiar. And it wasn’t just the taste, but the physical act of scooping out the seeds and then feelng them crunch between my teeth. Odd.