Greengages

We looked for greengages every year during the month of August. Frequently they disappointed. Either they were unripe, fibrous, almost dry, or else they were over-soft and mushy. Many were not worth biting into, for one could feel with one’s finger that they did not have the right temperature: a temperature unfindable in Celsius or Fahrenheit: the temperature of a particular coolness surrounded by sunshine. The temperature of a small boy’s fist.

The boy is somewhere between eight and ten-and-a half years old, the age of independence, before the press of adolescence. The boy holds the greengage in his hand, brings it to his mouth, bites, and the fruit darts its tongue against the back of his throat so that he swallows its promise.

A promise of what? Of something that has not yet been named and he will soon name. He tastes a sweetness which no longer has anything to do with sugar, but with a limb which goes on and on, and seems to have no end. The limb belongs to a body which he can only see with his eyes shut. They body has three more limbs and a neck and ankles and is like his own; except that it is inside out. Through the limb without end flows a sap ⎯ he can taste it between his teeth ⎯ the sap of a nameless pale wood, which he calls girl-tree.

It was enough that one greengage in a hundred reminded us of that.

– from <I>The Fruit as Remembered by the Dead</I> by John Berger

In fact, no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant “now,” even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.

Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (via theliteraryjournals)

Stop reading the Atlantic before going to bed on Sundays! Especially the top-popular links they so unhelpfully provide. You know there can be nothing good there.

The articles last night were about Paul Manafort helping dismantle our democracy, then a long piece of Carter-era government-commissioned meticulously detailed fiction about the aftermath of nuclear war in a surviving unaffected area (Charlottesville) and the country’s economy overall, and right next to it – a report by a senator who went to Korea and is basically saying how we all are completely oblivious to how close we are to the war there. Then also something about the Emmys, but I had no energy left to read about that.

winenot:

Боже, вот это красотень!

What world is this where this must be a revelation.

It should be just a basic thing about the world that everyone just knows, like that fire is hot, seawater is salty, that humans need air with some oxygen and a heart and blood inside their bodies. Also, all humans are beautiful and deserving of good things, regardless of what their bodies look like. That is not even worth discussing, and let’s move on to more important things to talk about, like how we stop increasing inequality, and the planet from becoming less hospitable to our species and to other animals we share it with.