I stuck my thumb in a rotten orange today. I was in line at the register, waiting to buy a rare healthy snack, unconsciously using the fruit as Nature’s stressball, when my thumb found a perfectly thumb-sized patch of rot and submerged. I was offended: I had purposefully selected that orange as the most appealing among the others available on the ornate orange pedestal; I was trying to be Good; how dare this bourgeois deli exist anyway.
Orange you glad I...? No.
I backed out of line, replaced the fruit on the pedestal and selected another orange. I should have probably handed the spoiled one over to the cashier or at least pointed it out but I felt vengeful. The backup orange still sits on my desk untouched, a symbol of a bad decision. It has a scar and brown freckles and a vaguely obscene navel; I do not want to eat it.
At the end of a (day? week? month? year?)… let’s say, “period” of portent and ennui of varying existential severity, the rotten orange seems significant. Personal.
In Chinese symbolism, oranges represent a prayer for good fortune and are commonly left at temple altars. During the Renaissance, oranges were often found in paintings of married couples as they were thought to signify love, marriage and wealth.
You probably recognize this Van Eyck - The oranges and nearly everything else in this portrait are imbued with meaning. Yes, even the scruffy dog stands for something greater than himself.
Popular symbolism of the orange – all fruits – is so rich that it would be impossible for someone as ennui-filled as I am at this moment to elucidate every possible interpretation. But I assure you that the inarticulate version of that discussion will continue to harrass my thoughts this evening. Does a rotten orange signify the opposite of a healthy orange? Or does it just signify rot. On an orange.
Nothing rhymes with orange, of course, but what rhymes with fortune? Only one word, actually: misfortune. For once I’m not frustrated by orange’s poetic obstinance… Better to have no companion than a negative one.
I am going to make myself eat that second string orange. It might be marvelous.
