The fig

to all the figs I've loved before, and to all the figs I'm yet to love

A day or so before a drive up to Canberra, through the screens, my eyes feast on the sight of Sam Vincent of Gollion Farm delivering a tray of figs to Onzieme restaurant — we’ve a booking there in a few nights, 8.30pm, yes we do. The thought of that tray having been carefully picked, carefully transported and carefully dropped at the door of a man who has deep respect for anything grown with such care. The thought of what goes through his mind having received this bounty. The thought of how they’ll appear on the menu, on plates making their way from the kitchen to the dining room.

Arriving in the capital late afternoon, we sit on the back deck with a glass of something chilled and a plate holding a French blue, slices of baguette and yes, figs. Oh and a little bowl of honey and a handful of walnuts. It’s a plate of pleasure, it’s a plate of the moment.

We follow the figs, from the quiet and calm of the back deck, to the buzz and warmth of the restaurant. We wander through the dining room, martini in hand, we say hello to Emily of Brightside Produce, one of the restaurant’s growers. She’s here for birthday celebrations. As we sit, as we look over the menu, we wonder what Emily has grown. Next thing the menu gets folded into a paper plane and flown through the air, from our table to hers, landing on Emily’s plate. She circles what’s from her ground and walks the menu back over to us.

It’s Emily’s tomatoes we’re excited by, they’re in a tomato consome. It’s the bunya nuts that came in a few weeks ago that we’re curious about; they’ve evolved into a bunya cream served with beetroot and dukkah.

And yes, it’s the fig. They’re on the plate with a golden halloumi, hazelnuts and honey. And then to the end meal, they’re in the bowl with some kind of crumble and some kind of cream, and a little extra bowl of the sliced beauties sitting to the side. Spoiled. And they’re in the glass; a fig wine made by chef Louis himself. It’s a tremendous thing really, having seen the fruit make its way from the farm to the restaurant; the fruit having gone through the minds and hands of the kitchen; then to sit there eating it in its finished pieces. It feels like art. Food really is an incredible form of creativity, of art. Those few figs we ate, they were the product of the minds and hands of people who care, people who know, people who have a wealth of knowledge and a generous desire to share.

At the Saturday morning farmer’s markets a morning or two later, I run into a very old friend, a friend from another lifetime. We ask what he’s bought, what’s good. Without hesitation, “figs.”

Back at the coast, I’ve watched the fig tree drop its leaves, it seemed to happen rather quickly, and it seemed to be a striking sign that the seasons are a changing, that summer is ending; like the curtains had dropped at the end of the show. Those leaves that when I first arrived back in Australia, were young and perky, bright green and full of life and giddiness for the summer ahead, they’ve slowly turned and now they’re on the ground, crinkled and crumpled; the tree bare. It’s done it’s thing for the year, it’s given us its beauty, and now it’s time to rest.

I was recently told that almost everyone has a story of a big change in their lives between the ages of 28 and 31. An idea that I’d love to explore, to ask those of all ages what their change was. And as I was told this, my mind came back to Sylvia Plath’s words in The Bell Jar. Perhaps the words that feel most pertinent to my 28 to 31, words that I’ve had sitting in my mind for the last year or so:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

And well, one cannot write about the fig, go through a fig season, without giving space and thought to the words of D.H. Lawrence, words that have come into my life through my mother reciting this poem:

Figs

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.
Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom with your lips.
But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.
Every fruit has its secret.
The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.

[it continues, I’d suggest reading on]

It was early on in this fig season that I sat under the tree at the Glenmore House property with three brilliant women, all who I could sit and talk to for hours and hours on end. In fact, we did; lunch under the tree lasted until 6pm, somehow. Arriving at the property, we wandered through the garden, Mickey climbing into the cages she’s built up around each of her fig trees, giving them the importance they deserve, like they’re a sculpture at an exhibition. She gently squeezes the dangling fruits, plucking and picking, though barely needing any force as they release from the tree so happily when they’re perfectly ripe. We sat under that tree with a plate of figs sitting next to a plate of just-plucked cucumber, lightly dressed; there was fresh bread and a plate of goat’s cheese and a bowl of pesto. A meal of this Australian summer that will stick in my mind for years to come. Simply perfect, perfectly simple.

Sometimes I like to think back to the all the figs I’ve loved before, they flash through my mind like some kind of film montage, looking down at them sitting in my hands, my weird wrinkly fingers squishing them ever-so-softly to reveal the insides, revealing the fruit’s secrets as Lawrence suggests. In a conversation I listened to recently with late Irish poet John O'Donohue, he talked about storing beauty away for when you need it. Well this is my beauty backlog.

After leaving the Australian embassy to vote YES in Australia’s referendum last year, I wandered the streets of the left bank, stumbled across a little corner grocer, bought a fig and here are some words from that moment I wrote on the fruit from a small round table and an espresso on a sidewalk in Paris:

There’s a lot I’m unsure of at the moment, but one thing I am sure of is the pleasure of buying a single fig. I think it might be my favourite type of purchase. Much more pleasurable than a bunch of figs, maybe because I’m nervous that I won’t enjoy each one with the level of enjoyment each one deserves, eating them knowing there’s another, or eating them because I don’t want them to spoil. A single fig, there’s something about it. The stall holders or shop owners in France don’t seem to love this insignificant purchase that I’m quite partial to, especially when I also ask if they can wash it for me, but they always oblige. I eat it on the street corner outside the shop, I tear it and I squish it a little between my two fingers. This one cost me €2.09, and it was definitely imported. Naughty, not ideal. But it was organic, so. The single fig is with me for a block or two and then it’s gone, leaving me a little sad that it’s over, happy that it happened, and a little excited knowing that there’s more ahead, even if it’s not until next season. Like a lot of things in life I suppose. You always need something to look forward to, and the purchasing of a single fig will always be one of those somethings for me.

It’s a curious fruit, the fig. One that has layers of symbolism in periods of art and religion; temptation and desire, the fleeting nature of life, abundance and prosperity, the good life, shame and modesty. A fruit that has been employed as a symbol of the complexities of human relationships and desires, of detachment from reality, of the intoxicating allure of escapism, of sensuality and forbidden passions, of frivolity and fertility. A fruit that adds a depth to storytelling in literature, going all the way back to the bible, to Shakespeare, and a depth to storytelling in film or photography.

This scene in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash of Dakota Johnson eating a fig is a film food scene that will forever have a place in my mind. Its simplicity adding layers, its sensuality perfectly mysterious. The film wouldn’t be the same without it.

It’s a piece of fruit that will disappear into your mouth in a matter of seconds perhaps without a second thought, but when you sit here and think about it on a cool, sunny, clear autumn morning, at the end of the season, you realise that it’s not just a piece of fruit, it’s so much more. But like anything in life, it’s what we make it.

To those in the southern hemisphere, I hope you’ve had a delicious and pleasant fig season, and I hope you find the pleasure in falling for a produce in the cool season ahead. Though, if figs are your one and only (understandable), I’m back off to the northern side of the world, to the Continent, to the Med, for my third fig season in a row, where I promise to feed you through snaps of figs, words on figs. I’m becoming quite the expert, one single fig at a time. And perhaps this film, Sous les Figues / Under the Fig Trees from French-Tunisian film maker Erige Sehiri can feed the withdrawal too.

I leave you with this wisdom told through the symbolism of the beloved fruit,

“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.” — Epictetus

H.

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To up the beauty in your life:

Figs
Restaurant: Onzieme restaurant, Canberra (and its bar downstairs, bar à vin)
Film: Sous les Figues / Under the Fig Trees
Grower and author: Sam Vincent of Gollion Farm
Arquinesia fig perfume, from incredible perfumery in Palma, Mallorca
A conversation with late Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue
Another film, ft. Dakota Johnson peeling and eating a fig: A Bigger Splash
Book: The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Incredible farmer’s market: Canberra Regional Farmer’s Markets, Sat morn
Another Canberra restaurant that does gorg things with figs: Bar Rochford
Another grower who I hope to write on soon: Emily Yarra of Brightside Produce
And a plate for your next fig season: