Thursday, December 29, 2011

I wrote this today. I'm gonna post it and you're probably not gonna read it and that's okay. It's just the first thing I wrote since this grad school app shit finished and I want to put it somewhere.


Like if you had never seen a banana before, would you say, “I should peel this.” Fruit has skin and flesh and in that way, we identify with it. I was told once that baby animals develop features like baby humans so that if their parents die, we will take care of them. A nannie goat tells her kid son who is standing on top of a very high rock, “Baby humans develop features like baby goats so that if their parents die, we will teach them how to climb.” On average, humans are fifty-seven percent water. In this way, we are all half-lake. When listing off nationalities people say, “I come from the sea, but only on my father’s side.” We can categorize nutrients, make lists. It’s amazing that one fruit can contain the same things as another when they grow on different trees. There’s a limit to substance. My father keeps telling me we have used over half the oil and I keep asking him how his life will change. This isn’t about conservation though. We could kill all the birds and wait several billion years and have more. When I was a kid I used to copy words out of the dictionary, as though this second handwritten dictionary would have more meaning. Everyone I know gets lonely at night, even though after we are done playing peek-a-boo we know that just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. It is always alarming to fall down and discover that you are made of bones after all. In 2065, when we have finished categorizing the Earth, people begin to feel lonely in the daytime. They talk about fruit and what the skin is made of, only instead of talking they take pictures of their brains and read what the colors say.  

1 comment:

Krista said...

I like the things that you write. Maybe it is because I just finished reading her book, but your writing reminds me of Miranda July's sometimes. In, like, the progression of thoughts, if that makes sense.