From 9fce418b46c9f0894f429384ef9e3dabaeffbeb4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 16:36:17 -0700 Subject: Change file hierarchy and rewrite makefile - File hierarchy is now as follows: - / - appendix/ < appendix source files - backlinks/ < backlink sources & builds - hapax/ < *.hapax source files - scripts/ < scripts, like *.js, *.hs, etc. - templates/ < templates for outputs - text/ < source files - trunk/ < assets, like css, images, heads, etc. - index.html - *.html - Makefile --- text/peaches.txt | 87 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 87 insertions(+) create mode 100644 text/peaches.txt (limited to 'text/peaches.txt') diff --git a/text/peaches.txt b/text/peaches.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81c37a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/peaches.txt @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +--- +title: Peaches +genre: prose + +id: peaches +toc: "Peaches" + +project: + title: Autocento of the breakfast table + class: autocento +... + +"My anger is like a peach," he said. +He was trying to show how metaphors could be anything. +I thought it worked. +I wrote it down in my red notebook. + +In my other class, there was a long discussion about the difference between metaphor and simile as they relate to [Prufrock][]. +I could only think about his peaches. +I wonder if he dared. + +A few years ago my friend dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock for Halloween. +Her costume consisted of rolled khaki trousers and a peach. +(I wonder where she found that in [October][].) +She was annoyed that she had to tell everyone who she was---"At a writers' party!" +I don't remember if she ate that peach. +I do remember the main meal was spaghetti. + +That party was held in a house in Chattanooga, in the basement. +There was a big back yard where people drank and talked and sat in the darkness. +Somewhere someone was smoking weed with a visiting writer. + +Earlier that day, [the writer had read a poem about his car accident][sebastian] a year ago, in Georgia, on the interstate. +It had broken him pretty badly, and his wife, but somehow their child was unharmed. +He said something about the peach pit being the one place Georgia held sacred. +He said it was the place where all new things grow. + +I 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. +In the same way, I can see how [anger is like sex][]: they are both heightened states of emotional observation. + +In Atlanta, there are something like five or ten [Peachtree Streets][]. +I'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. +I like to think a giant peach tree grows there, like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. + +I was walking down one of Atlanta's Peachtrees with my girlfriend when a man in tight pants, a runner, jogged past us. +We both agreed he had a marvelous ass. +I was annoyed, however, when she confessed that she wished I had one like his. +Later, we ate at a taqueria with peach-habanero salsa. + +[My mother][] would read to us as children. +The first real books I remember, the first novels, are Island of the Blue Dolphins and James and the Giant Peach. +I don't remember Island of the Blue Dolphins as well, probably because no movie was made of it. + +There'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. +Every time we went, my sister would rent two movies: _James and the Giant Peach_ and _Home Alone 3_. + +I wasn't allowed to stay home alone, or I don't remember it, until I was fifteen. +I built a potato cannon out of PVC pipe and a barbecue lighter. +I would load a potato, spray hairspray into the barrel, and light it. +Once, the cannon wouldn't light. +I looked down the barrel and pushed the trigger button to see if I could see a light. +I forgot that I had already primed the barrel with hairspray. +I singed my eyebrows and bangs. + +In peach season, my father would bring home a bag of the freestones every week or so. +He always got the cheap ones, so they were usually dry and pithy, with a stone that fell apart and nearly broke my tooth. +I don't eat them anymore when I go home. + +My mother would always eat canned peaches with cottage cheese. +For some reason I didn't think this was common knowledge. +I showed people how good it was when we went to a buffet: they said "I know." + +To be honest, I'm not even sure what a peach tree looks like. +I do know what an orange tree looks like, from a backyard in Phoenix, and a fig tree, from a back yard in Chattanooga. +I 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. +If, 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. + +I always heard growing up that the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple. +Maybe I'll luck out: maybe it'll be a peach. + +[Prufrock]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html +[October]: axe.html +[sebastian]: http://www.32poems.com/blog/5158/weekly-prose-feature-an-interview-with-sebastian-matthews-by-justin-bigos +[anger is like sex]: statements-frag.html +[Peachtree Streets]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Peachtree+Rd+NE,+Atlanta,+GA/@33.7779425,-84.3843615 +[My mother]: riptide_memory.html +[Popcorn Video]: http://popcornvideo.net/ -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81