Beets always make me think of the novel Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. It's been close to twenty-five years since I read it, but the connection that he made between the smell of beets and immortality has stayed with me. At the time, I don't think I'd ever actually eaten a fresh beet, but I imagined the smell somewhere close to the scent that rises from corn when you shuck it, that earthiness that seems to originate in the tassels. I don't think I was that far off.
I read Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice around the same time that I read Jitterbug Perfume, and while I was living with and caring for my dad who was terminally ill. I don't think you could find two more different perspectives on mortality and immortality than in those novels: Rice's vampires must die and give up human pleasures to live forever, and Robbins' characters must embrace life and live to the fullest to live forever; Rice's characters are trapped in a deathless existence, but Robbins' must be ever-vigilant; if they stop loving life, they will die. The juxtaposition of those ideas and my own experiences gave the twenty-three-year-old me a lot to think about.
Beets, anyone?
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