Traveling with bananas

In the traveler's handbook it is written not to travel hungry. You mustn't travel hungry because while prey to an empty stomach you neglect your surroundings, and you mustn't because then you will eat, paradoxically, poorly and expensively. You mustn't because if you are traveling in a country ruled by the siesta, you might not eat at all. One who travels hungry is a no-good traveler.

I am never hungry when I travel because I travel with a bag of food, either within another of my bags or held separately. The contents of my food bag do not compose a completely balanced diet, because it cannot include perishables, but it is filled with energy and nutrients in the form of cookies, fruit, and jams.

One of my favorite items to pack is bananas. Their peel makes them easy to pack, yet they are not so disastrous to peel as oranges. They are full of nutrients and are substantial enough to satisfy, especially when coupled with peanut butter.

But: packing bananas is a catch-22. Those fit for traveling are unfit to eat, and those fit to eat are unfit for traveling. Ripe bananas do not tuck away safely. If you put them on the top of your bag, they slide down the sides and get smushed; if you try to be clever and put them on the sides straightaway, obviously they still get smushed; if you put them in your pocket or hold them in your hands, you become one of those people who put bananas in their pockets and hold bananas in their hands. And should you take public transportation or challenge a fellow pedestrian to a race across the pedestrian subway, your bananas are surely lost.

I have tried to switch to green bananas while traveling, but I cannot acquire the taste. A banana that snaps and crunches is not pleasurable nor is it suited to any being that can tie double knots and skip stones across a park pond. These are beings that know the magic of simple pleasures, and are discerning enough to know that green bananas are not one.

In this way, then, packing bananas is like carving pumpkins, where any pumpkin you can carry back is by definition unfit to be carved. Still, I try. At a produce market in Dublin I bought a bunch of bananas for one euro, one-third of local supermarket prices, and knew that should I prove myself a good steward, I would have three days' worth of snacks.

My bunch began immediately to bruise: in my backpack they slipped beside my books, whose spines dug trenches in the peels, and in my hand, in a bag, they banged against telephone poles and other people. Upon returning to my hostel that evening, I discovered that market bananas cost one-third the price of supermarket bananas because by the time you arrive home from the market, you are left with a bunch of one-third bananas.

Packing bananas, given its risk, has caused me some psychological grief. As I walk about I am constantly thinking and worrying about them, my little yellow babies. I know I am putting them at risk each time I mount a bus or the subway, and when I find them indeed to have suffered because of me, little black clouds of violence sprouting along their bodies, I feel pangs of guilt. Had they had a more attentive steward, they might have reached the fruit bowl safely.

Unfortunately, even with my best care, I always let my bananas down. The best I can do is to eat them whole regardless, in order to make them feel loved despite their flaws as I consume them to the nub.

Westley Aubergine