Thoughts on "Floating Island" by Emily Kimbrough

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Thoughts on “Floating Island” by Emily Kimbrough

 

 

POST TWO

 

This is one of those paragraphs I wish I was writer enough to put on paper. It makes me want to jump the next flight and head to France to share this experience.

 

“Dinner that first night was a gourmet’s delight and almost overwhelming. It began with a pea soup of a consistency not too thick and not too thin, but like the little bear’s porridge, just right. Our next course was grilled herring, sweet, delicate, golden brown. A roast of veal subtly flavored came next, with pommes soufflés and string beans. The salad was plain lettuce, the kind that seems only to occur in France, where the lettuce is both so fresh it seems to have been brought from the garden only an hour before and at the same time “fatigued” to limpness. With this was a tray of assorted cheeses and finally fruit and almonds. Four bottles of the vin du pays marched the length of the table and at either end a long basket held the bread. The bread precipitated a downfall happily accepted by every dieter there. Days of atonement would come later.”

 

Anyone who has ever traveled knows the psychic acceptance of the culinary and caloric defeat imposed on the traveler by the native cuisine and the promise to walk more “tomorrow” to regain control.

 

Sure. 

 

Floating Island. 1968 by Emily Kimbrough.