Forgive me for not posting yesterday. I was in another state of mind - a red one, to be precise. I had a dream this week that I was swimming in tomato sauce and while that was a little strange, I must say that it wasn't as awful as one would think. I woke up to notice my orange-stained hands - from a solid week of putting up tomatoes. Ezra, too. He's been busy with me each day, dunking, peeling, slicing, and canning. Tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, salsa ("SouleSa" so named by Ez), and pizza sauce. Measuring, scooping, bagging, and talking and reading about tomatoes - all-consuming in a really wonderfully exhaustive way. I've sounded a little crazy this week (though that might be the fever that's brewing...) when I've tried to explain the feeling I've had - the feeling of being pulled so completely into a moment of the season by it's, well - by it's produce. Being pulled in ways gloriously abundant, blessed and overwhelming all at the same time by the seasons offerings. Marge Piercy says it well:
…ninety pounds
of luscious ripe tomatoes.
Eighteen quarts of tomato
juice on the evening of the
third day home, tomato seeds
in my hair, tomato skins
in my teeth, the surfaces
of the kitchen heaped with
tomatoes, tomatoes in buckets,
tomatoes lined up on the window
sills, my hands crisscrossed
with canning cuts, even
my dreams are acid,
running and red.
-Marge Piercy, The Engulfing Garden (The Little Magazine, Vol. 11, No.1, Spring 1977.)
Looking up and out from the kitchen, from morning till night, I notice now that it's not just the tomatoes. We're literally swimming in the reds of fall all around us now. In hues of red and orange - just like the tomatoes on our vines, in my dreams, and now on our pantry shelves.