The smack of fruity goodness

I actually have an apple and an orange on my desk today, so I'm comparing them. We've all heard that little cliché about how this is supposed to be a paradigm for error. I should be gasping in horror at what I am about to do. You should immediately stop reading and report me to the authorities.

Assuming that you have done that, I will take what remaining time I have to continue to gaze at the two objects on my desk and note their similarities and their differences. This is my understanding of what comparing is. I feel repulsed, yet drawn to attempt the forbidden. Will my mind bend in ways from which there is no return? I thought the same thing the first time I dropped acid. Is this action the last sane decision that I make? Not that I would know. This is like wondering if the 1000lb bomb that you have failed to disarm is going to hurt you when it goes off. Does vapor have a consciousness?

I often wonder at the ability of the mind to perceive time. I was talking with my son about time distortion. You know how when you are at the carnival and you are there for hours and yet time seems to go by so fast (when you are a kid and not filled with dread about all the hidden terrors of large spinning equipment and spooky carnies and what the hell did I just eat?) as compared with when you are stuck in a meeting you keep wondering what you are there for, or in the case of my son, stuck in math, time does not go by very fast at all. It's the same amount of time that passes, but it passes quick or slow depending on your engagement.

Apple. Orange. These can stand for so many things, but if we reel back out in our perception a ways, they are both round fruit. Go out far enough and they both become little dots. We can go the other way as well. Move in on your perception to the atomic level and they are both extremely large fields of whirling electrons. It is only at the general human level that their differences overcome their similarities. My orange is smaller and oranger than my apple, but they are both sitting on my desk. I'll inevitably eat one before I eat the other, but I will eat them both. Eventually they will both become part of me for a while. I will have stewardship over their electrons; they will become part of my experience. I will throw parts of each of them toward my trash can. I'll prefer one to the other.

It's possible that one or the other will thrill me enough so that I go out into the wide world as an emissary for my chosen preference. This happens a lot to people. Someone will take up smoking and find themselves so thrilled with the taste of a Camel Light that they use the little points on the pack to collect t-shirts and hats so they can advertise. Some people do this with beer, clothing lines and sports teams. Will I be an apple guy or an orange guy? Can I buy products that extol one while disparaging the other? Will I make decisions about someone when I find out they prefer the same food as I do? Does one align me more closely with a political party and therefor influence my presidential vote?

What if I don't choose to eat either one of them, instead preferring to let them rot on my desk while I go back to the vending machine and select a bar of chocolate? This is not an unheard of scenario. Mmm. Chocolate tastes good. It compares favorably to the flavor of fruit, but there is the hidden swirl of energy that my body can use that I have also been contemplating lately. Chocolate has it's own influence, but I have found that I don't prefer it to the energy that fruit releases within me. I like the flavor of chocolate more than the fruit, but I would rather have eaten the fruit than the chocolate. Experience has taught me some things that I can use. I like that I can time travel now, even if it is only for a few moments.

Clouds swirl about on the unseen levels of which we are made. I think about impermanence and entropy. I think about the real difference between my apple and my orange. I think about sex because I am a guy and it's been seven minutes. Energy courses through me and I direct it as a practice. Attention, perception and direction. When I eat my fruit, baby, I'm gonna eat it like I mean it, and my pleasure will be beyond compare.