La Pomme d’Amour

Today I return to an idea from recent post, “Intermingling”, but with a Taos twist. What, you wonder, is a pomme d’amour? And what could it possibly have to do with a high desert town in the southwest? Both good questions. And here’s another. Aside from the similarly staged snapshot in the previous post and this post, what do either have to do with Goethe’s color wheel?!?!

Let’s start with the last question, and then double back for the previous two. Remember this?

And this?

What about this?

I caught sight of this fiery beauty reclining in front of a lush lawn, impossibly green because the summer of 2023 has delivered rainstorm after rainstorm. Spring green grass in September.

The chromatic circle… [is] arranged in a general way according to the natural order… for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours

And for a magical moment, I knew that this iconic southwestern fruit (surprised?) offset dramatically against the verdant backdrop outside our kitchen was not just an uncanny pairing of color wheel complements, but an obvious overlap between our two worlds. Liminality… Two worlds interflowing mysteriously… (Source: Intermingling)

Ah-ha! Green and red, diametrically opposed, evoking one another. You with me?

Now for the eponymous pomme d’amour: a poetic epithet for the tomato. Literally, a love apple. You might enjoy poking around a little to learn about the etymology, as I have. But the reference resonates differently for me. The Love Apple is one of my favorite restaurants in Taos, New Mexico. It’s a charming little place, quirky-charming, to be precise. It might fit perfectly into our fair village of Essex. Small. Quirky cultural and architectural history, creative cuisine conjured out of local ingredients, lots of loyal patrons,…

In other words, a couple handfuls of tomatoes harvested from our garden, rinsed, air dried, and set aside for upcoming meals has — for a moment — invited two opposing worlds to overlap. A fleeting glimpse of tomatoes on a windowsill with electric green grass beyond, and suddenly my Essex life and my Santa Fe life evoke one another. A mysterious affinity.

As before, the color wheel counterpoints lend an ingredient to the elixir. As does the love apple, la pomme d’amour. But these are simplistic explanations, a couple of the ingredients in a potent potion as mysterious as it is mesmerizing. Two worlds apart, overlapping, briefly.