fiction
humboldt fruit
Fat, pimply Papayas cave in on themselves. Sitting all day in the July sun, they slowly implode, succumbing to the gravity of the softening, magmatic fruit-flesh beneath their skins. As they rot they breathe, and my are lungs suddenly privy to a range of rare and exotic exhalations: a 'vivifying' kick of hydrocarbons from a parked Cadillac, a passing semi, and a motorcyclist on North Ave, dying papayas mingling with the haze, their breath hooked and thrown into the air by the slipstream of the thoroughfare. Mr. Turtle over there's doing his share, throwing down a few microns of carbon dioxide for the biosphere- and pulsing, the exhalations of the lagoon itself- its each vast breath articulated in a series of infinite, fragile gasps that make its iridescent skin quake. All this, while 12 fat, pimply Papayas are undergoing a series of tiny miracles called enzymatic reactions below the skin, that will reorganize the chemical makeup of their flesh into an even sweeter, softer, little packet of Paradise. Good god folks, I say let’s all take five and give Papayas a hand!
Their friends the Strawberries are a distinctly snappier bunch. The strawberries stacks are noticeably absent of the paunch and the sloppy atmosphere that’s going down over in Papayatown. In lieu of the Parrothead Papaya Vibe, I’m feeling more like at least one of the strawberries has My Lip Gloss is Poppin on its iPod- and let me tell y’all these berries are popping! Like a photograph of Sophia Loren, a physical articulation of life bursting with the very life it contains- a blazing charisma that renders its physical delicacy, the fragile microfibers of photo paper and fruit flesh a glorious juxtaposition- a moment of sheer genius by the Creator! Strawberrytown is a Mahler masterwork where Nature plays all her faces and then some- deeply serene at the curve between seeds, then explosively vibrant when it dimples and puckers, a pink Fantasia that plays the angelic chords without so much as a touch of rococo posturing- the Venus of Twombly but not of Botticelli! Hello, people of North Avenue! I would like to show you this thing, Strawberry! May I have a moment of your time please? You are allowed to touch it’s miraculous skin, even swallow its music completely!
