“You are kind of ready to burst – that’s how I’m feeling you’re feeling” — is what my most recently preferred TikTok tarot girl says today. Not wrong. Last time I was really on Substack, I wrote about tomatoes. Now, the sunset has shifted and tomatoes have shaded themselves, sizing down softly, into plums.
I only got out of NY state once this summer, something I have been enthusiastically telling everyone. I think I do so with the hope that they will say ‘Wow! You really stayed put, diva!’ because I did. I stayed and saved and worked and pretended the beach was many other places, which it actually is. No one cares, of course, and honestly they shouldn’t, because being in the same place is something Adults Just Do. Obvious to most, but revelatory to me: movement does not always mean catharsis! I’ve known for some time that busy-ness is a futile performance, but this summer taught me something new: there’s an elegance to waiting.
When I did go away, it was to Oregon. In the garden, I picked plums.
My Grandma cultivated this garden when she was alive, and walking through it makes me feel like I am still toddling beside her, smelling roses that are falling apart with perfume. It makes me miss her tremendously. The flowers are beautiful, but the plums make it Eden. We have yellow varietals and purple ones. The purple ones tend tarter and tighter, while the yellow ones are sort of pillowy and botanic.
I took a basket and played music from my phone. Climbing up a step ladder, I tried to be a Hat Girl. I always dream of being a Girl Who Can Wear Caps. The efforts were earnest, the results were consistent with history: not meant to be.
Up I went, reaching for one plum and then the next. The higher I climbed, the more overwhelmed I felt with how many there were – so much so that occasionally, I just paused and looked. They were really ripe, dripping in almost a dangerous way. Sometimes, when I moved a branch, a few would plunk down to the ground on their own and kind of splat into the grass.
Honestly, though I loved picking the perfect guys, I was obsessed with the ones that fell due to their sweetness and density. I ate them, too. Or, when they started to bubble with sugar and sort of sigh, I grasped them with my palms and let them explode.
I brought the purple ones, tougher in structure, home with me. I am too lazy to make jam, but I like stewing the plums down into a compote to add to yogurt or plop on toast. This also makes me feel very impressive, even though I am actually – like I mentioned – being sort of lazy with it. I cut up the plums, then poach them in not much water, then add cinnamon, cardamom, lemon, pink salt (that part definitely doesn’t really matter and is just pretty to me). Then, everything smells like – I was going to say fall, or Christmas, but it’s not that, really. More, everything smells like something is on its way.
The ripening of plums… that kind of waiting feeling. Hard to watch something change, but easy and inevitable to notice that it has.
There’s that Manet I remember, Plum Brandy (1877) where a lass sits with… plum brandy, Nighthawks style, and stares into space with a lit cig. Her hat is fab, and we are left to wonder: what is she waiting for? What is growing ripe?
Also! “This is Just to Say” (1962) by William Carlos Williams.
I always find this one so cheeky! Fun to say the word ‘icebox’, of course. If plums have something to do with waiting, WCW certainly interrupts the timeline. What happens when we snatch away the plums that were meant to be saved? If someone was reserving them for breakfast, how very bad, then, to eat them under the cover of night. How fun to rub it in. How sacred, how inconsequential.
I’ve been writing these little Plum thoughts down for some time (it is actually fall, after all) and keep trying to finish this with some kind of nuance. But she is eluding me! And though I want to be Perfect Jam, I see no way out of being sticky, quicker Compote.
Here’s what I have for you: we wait for plums and when they come we pick them as well as we can and then we do what we can with them after, to convert the energy they had into another kind of energy in another kind of season. This is good because it makes beautiful things last and it helps us remember what has happened. It is good to let plums sit in brandy and daydream, but you can’t do it too long because… idk even in 1877 that would be still be weird I feel. It’s good to eat plums in an indulgent, secret way, too – and if they belonged to someone else, best to communicate that.
What I haven’t told you is that this summer, my mouth started itching. When I bite into stonefruit now, in the back of my mind I understand an allergy is forming. Makes me nervous to think about having to stew plums as the only way to eat them. The itchiness isn’t so bad itself, but it is the ominous nature of fretting about discomfort that does it.
Still, I ate the fruit. I felt the little itch. And finally, I decided: Whatever!!! I simply can’t be bothered to care :)
