about summary refs log tree commit diff stats
path: root/peaches.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'peaches.txt')
-rw-r--r--peaches.txt87
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 87 deletions
diff --git a/peaches.txt b/peaches.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 81c37a2..0000000 --- a/peaches.txt +++ /dev/null
@@ -1,87 +0,0 @@
1---
2title: Peaches
3genre: prose
4
5id: peaches
6toc: "Peaches"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13"My anger is like a peach," he said.
14He was trying to show how metaphors could be anything.
15I thought it worked.
16I wrote it down in my red notebook.
17
18In my other class, there was a long discussion about the difference between metaphor and simile as they relate to [Prufrock][].
19I could only think about his peaches.
20I wonder if he dared.
21
22A few years ago my friend dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock for Halloween.
23Her costume consisted of rolled khaki trousers and a peach.
24(I wonder where she found that in [October][].)
25She was annoyed that she had to tell everyone who she was---"At a writers' party!"
26I don't remember if she ate that peach.
27I do remember the main meal was spaghetti.
28
29That party was held in a house in Chattanooga, in the basement.
30There was a big back yard where people drank and talked and sat in the darkness.
31Somewhere someone was smoking weed with a visiting writer.
32
33Earlier that day, [the writer had read a poem about his car accident][sebastian] a year ago, in Georgia, on the interstate.
34It had broken him pretty badly, and his wife, but somehow their child was unharmed.
35He said something about the peach pit being the one place Georgia held sacred.
36He said it was the place where all new things grow.
37
38I can see how anger could be like a peach: its juice runs out of the mouth and down the chin, dropping onto the pants and staining them.
39In the same way, I can see how [anger is like sex][]: they are both heightened states of emotional observation.
40
41In Atlanta, there are something like five or ten [Peachtree Streets][].
42I'm not sure if they all connect at some point, but from what I could see, they would have to do some contorting to get to the same point.
43I like to think a giant peach tree grows there, like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
44
45I was walking down one of Atlanta's Peachtrees with my girlfriend when a man in tight pants, a runner, jogged past us.
46We both agreed he had a marvelous ass.
47I was annoyed, however, when she confessed that she wished I had one like his.
48Later, we ate at a taqueria with peach-habanero salsa.
49
50[My mother][] would read to us as children.
51The first real books I remember, the first novels, are Island of the Blue Dolphins and James and the Giant Peach.
52I don't remember Island of the Blue Dolphins as well, probably because no movie was made of it.
53
54There's an independent video rental store where I grew up called [Popcorn Video][], one of the only stores I went to in my hometown that wasn't a chain.
55Every time we went, my sister would rent two movies: _James and the Giant Peach_ and _Home Alone 3_.
56
57I wasn't allowed to stay home alone, or I don't remember it, until I was fifteen.
58I built a potato cannon out of PVC pipe and a barbecue lighter.
59I would load a potato, spray hairspray into the barrel, and light it.
60Once, the cannon wouldn't light.
61I looked down the barrel and pushed the trigger button to see if I could see a light.
62I forgot that I had already primed the barrel with hairspray.
63I singed my eyebrows and bangs.
64
65In peach season, my father would bring home a bag of the freestones every week or so.
66He always got the cheap ones, so they were usually dry and pithy, with a stone that fell apart and nearly broke my tooth.
67I don't eat them anymore when I go home.
68
69My mother would always eat canned peaches with cottage cheese.
70For some reason I didn't think this was common knowledge.
71I showed people how good it was when we went to a buffet: they said "I know."
72
73To be honest, I'm not even sure what a peach tree looks like.
74I do know what an orange tree looks like, from a backyard in Phoenix, and a fig tree, from a back yard in Chattanooga.
75I also know what a cherry tree looks like, or at least a type of them, from my own backyard at home, as well as mulberry and apple.
76If, for some reason, I find myself lost in a sinister Garden of Eden, I'll at least know a few of the trees I can eat from.
77
78I always heard growing up that the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple.
79Maybe I'll luck out: maybe it'll be a peach.
80
81[Prufrock]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
82[October]: axe.html
83[sebastian]: http://www.32poems.com/blog/5158/weekly-prose-feature-an-interview-with-sebastian-matthews-by-justin-bigos
84[anger is like sex]: statements-frag.html
85[Peachtree Streets]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Peachtree+Rd+NE,+Atlanta,+GA/@33.7779425,-84.3843615
86[My mother]: riptide_memory.html
87[Popcorn Video]: http://popcornvideo.net/