How would you describe a pear?

An excerpt from Beatice and Virgil by Yann Martel. So good I had to read it twice.

(Virgil and Beatrice are sitting at the foot of the tree.They are looking out blankly.Silence.)

VIRGIL: What I'd give for a pear.

BEATRICE: A pear?

VIRGIL: Yes. A ripe and juicy one.

(Pause.)

BEATRICE: I've never had a pear.

VIRGIL: What?

BEATRICE: In fact, I don't think I've ever set eyes on one.

VIRGIL: How is that possible? It's a common fruit.

BEATRICE: My parents were always eating apples and carrots. I

guess they didn't like pears.

VIRGIL: But pears are so good! I bet you there's a pear tree right around here. (He looks about.)

BEATRICE: Describe a pear for me. What is a pear like?

VIRGIL: (settling back) I can try. Let's see . . . To start with, a pear has an unusual shape. It's round and fat on the bottom, but tapered on top.

BEATRICE: Like a gourd.

VIRGIL: A gourd ? You know gourds but you don't know pears? How odd the things we know and don't. At any rate, no, a pear is smaller than an average gourd, and its shape is more pleasing to the eye. A pear becomes tapered in a symmetrical way, its upper half sitting straight and centred atop its lower half. Can you see what I mean?

BEATRICE: I think so.

VIRGIL: Let's start with the bottom half. Can you imagine a fruit that is round and fat?

BEATRICE: Like an apple?

VIRGIL: Not quite. If you look at an apple with your mind's eye, you will notice that the girth of the apple is at its widest either in the middle of the fruit or in the top third, isn't that so?

BEATRICE: You're right. A pear is not like this?

VIRGIL: No. You must imagine an apple that is at its widest in the bottom third.

BEATRICE: I can see it.

VIRGIL: But we must not push the comparison too far. The bottom of a pear is not like an apple's.

BEATRICE: No?

VIRGIL: No. Most apples sit on their buttocks, so to speak, on a circular ridge or on four or five points that keep them from falling over. Past the buttocks, a little ways up, there's what would be the anus of the fruit if the fruit were a beast.

BEATRICE: I see precisely what you mean.

VIRGIL: Well, a pear is not like that. A pear has no buttocks. Its bottom is round.

BEATRICE: So how does it stay up?

VIRGIL: It doesn't. A pear either dangles from a tree or lies on its side.

BEATRICE: As clumsy as an egg.

VIRGIL: There's something else about the bottom of a pear: most pears do not have those vertical grooves that some apples have. Most pears have smooth, round, even bottoms.

BEATRICE: How enchanting.

VIRGIL: It certainly is. Now let us move north past our fruity equator.

BEATRICE: I'm following you.

VIRGIL: There comes this tapering I was telling you about.

BEATRICE: I can't quite see it. Does the fruit come to a point? Is it shaped like a cone?

VIRGIL: No. Imagine the tip of a banana.

BEATRICE: Which tip?

VIRGIL: The end tip, the one you hold in your hand when you're eating one.

BEATRICE: What kind of banana? There are hundreds of varieties.

VIRGIL: Are there?

BEATRICE: Yes. Some are as small as fat fingers, others are real clubs. And their shapes vary too, as do their taste.

VIRGIL: I mean the regular, yellow ones that taste really good.

BEATRICE: The common banana, M. sapientum. You probably have the Gros Michel variety in mind.

VIRGIL: I'm impressed.

BEATRICE: I know bananas.

VIRGIL: Better than a monkey. Take the end tip of a common banana, then, and place it on top of an apple, taking into account the differences between apples and pears that I've just described.

BEATRICE: An interesting graft.

VIRGIL: Now make the lines smoother, gentler. Let the banana flare out in a friendly way as it merges into the apple. Can you see it?

BEATRICE: I believe I can.

VIRGIL: One last detail. At the very top of this apple-banana composite, add a surprisingly tough stalk, a real tree trunk of a stalk. There, you have an approximation of a pear.

BEATRICE: A pear sounds like a beautiful fruit.

VIRGIL: It is. In colour, commonly, a pear is yellow with black spots.

BEATRICE: Like a banana again.

VIRGIL: No, not at all. A pear isn't yellow in so bright, lustreless and opaque a way. It's a paler, translucent yellow, moving towards beige, but not creamy, more watery, approaching the visual texture of a watercolour wash. And the spots are sometimes brown.

BEATRICE: How are the spots distributed?

VIRGIL: Not like the spots on a leopard. It's more a matter of areas of shadowing than of real spots, depending on the degree of maturity of the pear. By the way, a ripe pear bruises easily, so it must be handled with care.

BEATRICE: Of course.

VIRGIL: Now the skin. It's a peculiar skin, the pear's, hard to describe. We were speaking of apples and bananas.

BEATRICE: Yes.

VIRGIL: They have smooth, slippery skins.

BEATRICE: They do.

VIRGIL: A pear does not have so smooth or slippery a skin.

BEATRICE: Really?

VIRGIL: It is so. A pear has a rougher skin.

BEATRICE: Like an avocado's?

VIRGIL: No. But since you mention avocados, a pear is somewhat shaped like an avocado, although the bottom of a pear is usually plumper.

BEATRICE: Fascinating.

VIRGIL: And a pear becomes thinner in its top half in a more pronounced way than an avocado does. Nonetheless, the two fruits are more or less similar in form.

BEATRICE: I see the shape clearly.

VIRGIL: But you cannot compare their skins! An avocado's skin is as warty as a toad's. An avocado looks like a vegetable with leprosy. The pear is characterized by a thin roughness, delicate and interesting to the touch. If you could magnify it a hundred times, do you know what it would sound like, the sound of fingertips running over the skin of a dry pear?

BEATRICE: What?

VIRGIL: It would sound like the diamond of a record player entering a groove. That same dancing crackle, like the burning of the driest, lightest kindling.

BEATRICE: A pear is surely the finest fruit in the world!

VIRGIL: It is, it is! That's the skin of a pear for you.

BEATRICE: Can one eat it?

VIRGIL: Of course. We're not talking here of the waxy, thuggish skin of an orange. The skin of a pear is soft and yielding when ripe.

BEATRICE: And what does a pear taste like?

VIRGIL: Wait. You must smell it first. A ripe pear breathes a fragrance that is watery and subtle, its power lying in the lightness of its impression upon the olfactory sense. Can you imagine the smell of nutmeg or cinnamon?

BEATRICE: I can.

VIRGIL: The smell of a ripe pear has the same effect on the mind as these aromatic spices. The mind is arrested, spellbound, and a thousand and one memories and associations are thrown up as the mind burrows deep to understand the allure of this beguiling smell — which it never comes to understand, by the way.

BEATRICE: But how does it taste? I can't wait any longer.

VIRGIL: A ripe pear overflows with sweet juiciness.

BEATRICE: Oh, that sounds good.

VIRGIL: Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

BEATRICE: I must have one.

VIRGIL: The texture of a pear, its consistency, is yet another difficult matter to put into words. Some pears are a little crunchy.

BEATRICE: Like an apple?

VIRGIL: No, not at all like an apple! An apple resists being eaten. An apple is not eaten, it is conquered. The crunchiness of a pear is far more appealing. It is giving and fragile. To eat a pear is akin to . . . kissing.

BEATRICE: Oh, my. It sounds so good.

VIRGIL: The flesh of a pear can be slightly gritty. And yet it melts in the mouth.

BEATRICE: Is such a thing possible?

VIRGIL: With every pear. And that is only the look, the feel, the smell, the texture. I have not even told you of the taste.

BEATRICE: My God!

VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand. You would rather be alone than in company. You would rather have silence than music. All your senses but taste fall inactive. You see nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing—or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like . . . (He struggles. He gives up with a shrug.) I don't know. I can't put it into words. A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly) I wish you had a pear.

VIRGIL: And if I had one, I would give it to you.

(Silence.)

Buy the book here.

With our writing, we will live forever

An excerpt from The Thirteenth Tale:

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books ar read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

Diane Setterfield is an amazing writer, and if you haven't already read The Thirteenth Tale then you really should. I think what she says here makes so much sense. As writers we share the same desires, same fears, as everyone else. With our writing, we will live forever.

A response to The Invisible Path

I found The Invisible Path by Charles Eisenstein while perusing a friend's facebook page and was so touched by it that I had to write a response.

I'm going to pick out the pieces of his essay that speak to me and respond to them, but I want to encourage you to go and read it in its entirety here.

Here is the introduction to start:

As the age turns, millions of people are pioneering a transition from the old world to the new. It is a journey fraught with peril and hardship and breathtaking discovery, a journey irreducibly unique for each of us. Because we are stepping out into the new, it is also profoundly uncertain and at times lonely. I cannot map out the details of anyone's individual path, but I can fortify you as you walk it and illuminate some of its universal features. My purpose is to give voice to what you have always known (without knowing it) and always believed (without believing it), so that you may breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Ah, I was right all along."

In a sense I am not describing a path at all, since there isn't one in the new territory of the pioneer. Indeed, what I am describing is a departure from a path, the ready-made paths laid out before us, and the creation of a new one. You know the ready-made path I'm talking about. Typified by that odious board game "Life," it begins with school, traverses the territory of marriage, kids, and career, and, if all goes well, ends in a long and comfortable retirement. This program has been crumbling for decades now, as high rates of divorce and radical career change demonstrate. I, for one, am not planning for retirement; the very concept feels alien to me, as does the notion that my Golden Years are to be any time other than right now.

I will describe seven stages of the discovery and walking of this invisible path from the old world to the new. I present them in a linear narrative, but usually their progression is not strictly linear. It is, rather, fractal: each stage interpenetrates the rest, and we may skip around a lot, revisit old territory, jump ahead to new, pass through some stages in minutes and others in years. Nonetheless, I think you will recognize some of the major landmarks in your own journey.

Stage 1: Something is Wrong / Idealism
Idealism is a belief that a more beautiful world is possible; that the world as we know it is deficient, unworthy of our full participation. When idealism is not expressed as action, it turns into cynicism...

The idealism of youth is a seed of what is to come. The teenager looks out upon some aspect of the world and is outraged. "No force in the universe will make me accept a world in which this happens! I will not be complicit in it! I will not sell out!" Usually this attitude is unconscious, manifesting either as cynicism or as rage, an uncontrollable anger directed at whatever surrogate target is available. Those teenagers with the strongest idealism are often the angriest; we think there is something wrong with them and their anger problem, but really there is something right. Their protest is misdirected, but fundamentally valid...

...In a carrot-and-stick strategy, on the one hand we entice youth into complicity with the adult world, while on the other abashing it with patronizing dismissals and intimidating it with severe punishments for lashing out. And so, bought and cowed, we earn the badge of "maturity" and enter the adult world.

Bought and cowed, yes, but never broken. That knowledge of a more beautiful world lies latent within us, waiting for an event to reactivate it.

Eisenstein is right to connect this first stage with adolescence, which for many people is the time when we realize that there is a man behind the curtain, and he's more malicious than we could think or dream him to be. But for me I think I went through this stage much later in life. As a teen and even going into college (I was only 17 when I started my freshman year at UCLA) I was too focused on superflous things like boys, track, drinking and my new-found liberty to be concerned with anything greater than myself. I think there are kids who, frustrated with the state of the world, feel this way in high school. But I think a lot of those kids wore black lipstick or listened to Rage Against the Machine.

But I also think that this is something people never grow out of. I think the world is filled with beauty but the people who populate and control it are full of shit. Moving on.

Stage 2: Refusal or Withdrawal
On some level, Stage 2 is always concurrent with Stage 1, but I will describe it separately because so many people are very nearly successful in suppressing the feeling of wrongness, suppressing the intuition of a more beautiful world that is possible, and relegating it to an inconsequential realm: their weekends, their choice of music, or most insidiously, their opinions. People have very strong opinions about what is wrong with the world and what "we" should do about it, and how life "should" be lived, but don't meaningfully act upon those opinions. They like to read about what is wrong with the world and voice their concurrence. It is as if their opinions provided a vent for the indignant anger that would otherwise power real transformation...

Isn't this so true? I feel like the internet has been built on this principle. The powers that be produce content in hopes that it will draw users and produce this type of reaction. They want individuals to be outraged, compelled to comment and voice their opinion--however meaningful or redundant--to the rest of the community. But who reads and takes stock in these comments? Is anyone ever affected by other people's opinions or are they selfishly vomiting up their own thoughts without considering the ideas and possibilities that someone else's unique perspective might bring to the table?

The suppression of the desire to transcend the old world is never entirely successful. The unexpressed energy comes out in the form of anxiety, which is none other than the feeling, "Something is wrong around here and I don't know what it is." It can also fuel addiction or escapism, substitutes for the longed-for more beautiful world. Eventually, if all goes well, these props to life-as-usual fail, initiating a withdrawal from the lives we have known.

I most definitely fuels "addiction, escapism, substitutes for the longed-for more beautiful world." I read this and think. This is why I smoke. This is why I drink. This is why I read crappy young-adult vampire romance novels. To get away from the hell of everyday struggle. Withdrawal from the lives we have known you say? See here. And here. And here. And here.

This withdrawal can take many forms. In my previous essay I discussed depression and chronic fatigue, which are unconscious or semi-conscious refusals to participate in the world. In my own life, for many years the refusal took the form of a half-hearted participation, in which I would go along with some, but not all, of the conventions of compliance. Whether in school or in work, I did just enough to get by, unwilling to fully devote myself to a world I unconsciously knew was wrong, yet not aware enough or brave enough to repudiate it fully either. If you perceive in yourself or another such "flaws" as laziness or procrastination, you may actually be seeing the signs of a valid, noble, yet unconscious refusal.

I like the idea that I was a poor student because I was unwilling to fully devote myself to a world I unconsciously knew was wrong. And that my laziness are the signs of a valid, noble, yet unconscious refusal. But I really think it was because I was lazy.

A final and very telling symptom of this stage is the experience of struggle. Because you are still trying to participate and to withdraw at the same time, life becomes exhausting. You have to expend tremendous efforts to accomplish anything. You wonder why your career is stalled, why your luck is bad, why your car keeps breaking down, why nothing seems to click, when other people's careers proceed smoothly. The reason is that unconsciously, you are expelling yourself from the world you've inhabited so you can search for another one.

Stage 3: The Search
In this stage, you are searching for something, but you don't know what it is. You begin to explore new worlds, read books you would never have been interested in before. You dabble in spirituality, in self-help books and seminars; you try different religions and different politics. You are attracted to this cause and that cause, but although they are exciting, you probably don't commit very deeply to any of them (though for a time you may convert very loudly)...You know there is another world, another life, bigger and more beautiful than the one you were acculturated to. You just don't know what it is, and you have never experienced it. It is therefore a theoretical knowledge.

The search is in vain. Sometimes you give up for a while and attempt to recommit fully to the life you have withdrawn from. You join back in, but not for long. The self-evident wrongness of that world becomes more acute, and the relapse into depression, fatigue, self-sabotage, or addiction is quick and intense. You have no choice but to continue searching.

Stage 4: Doubt and Despair
At this point, your idealism, your refusal, your search might seem like an enormous, self-indulgent error. Yet at the same time your perception of the wrongness of the world intensifies...Your situation is like that of a fetus at the onset of labor. The cervix has not yet opened: there is no light, no exit, no direction to escape the titanic forces bearing down upon you. Every promise of escape, every door you explored in your search phase, is proven to be a lie, a dead end.

At its most extreme, this is an unbearable condition that must nonetheless be borne. Subjectively it feels eternal. It is from such a state that we derive our descriptions of Hell: unbearable and eternal.

I honestly don't think I'll ever be out of this stage in my life. It feels like there is a part of the world that will always be corrupt and filled disparaging pain. It's only when you're doing what you're meant to do (what Eisenstein calls walking the Invisible Path) that you escape the doubt and despair. But for me its more like walking a tightrope over a volcano. Perilously balancing over the inevitable.

Stage 5: A Glimpse
...You have caught a glimpse of your destination, the thing you'd been searching for. You might observe that the effort of your search fell a million times short of the power that has finally brought you here. Your quest was impossible -- yet here you are! Perhaps it comes in the form of an intense experience of your true power and gifts, of joy and healing, of unity and simplicity, of the omnipresent providence of the universe, of the presence of the divine...You will be left in a state of profound gratitude and awe.

...Because it is a real knowing, sooner or later (and usually sooner) it manifests as action in the world, creative action. You begin the next stage: a walk toward the destination you have been shown.

Stage 6: The Invisible Path
You have glimpsed your destination and felt its promise, but how do you get there? Now begins a real adventure, a journey without a path. Well-marked paths exist to becoming a lawyer, a professor, a doctor, or any other position in the old world, but there is no path toward the next unfolding of your true self. To be sure, you may still embark on a training program or something as part of a radical career change, but you realize that these structures are merely something you recruit into your own pathmaking, and not a path to your destination.

In this stage, real changes happen in your life. You may experience the end of a relationship, bankruptcy, career change, moving to a different part of the country, changes in your body, an entirely different social life and different kind of intimate relationship. You may continue to undergo various crises, but they don't have the apocalyptic, desperate feeling of the earlier stages, but are rather like birth contractions, and indeed your situation is much like that of a fetus in the birth canal, being propelled toward the light. As this phase progresses, you might even have the feeling of having been reborn in the same body (or different body). While some vestiges of your old life will remain, there is no doubt that you are in new territory. You often experience a sense of newness, freshness, vulnerability, and discovery.

The walk toward the state you now know exists is fraught with pitfalls, dead ends, thickets and swamps. You have no markers, no external indicators of the right way. I said there is no path in this new territory, but that is not strictly true. There is a path, but it is an invisible path, a path you work out yourself. Your guides are your own intuition and self-trust. You learn to ignore the voices that say a given choice is foolish, irresponsible, or selfish. Your self-trust is your only guide, because the voices of your old world do not know this territory. They have never been there. It is new for you. You find your own way, groping along, taking wrong turns sometimes and doubling back, only to realize that the wrong turn was not wrong after all, but the only way you could have learned the right path.

I wanted to write more of a response to this essay, but after having started this last Thursday and the crazy weekend I had I don't have the energy. Please read the whole thing and leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Good Writing: Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Natasha Vargas-Cooper
From Jesse James Hollywood on Trial, The AWL

Though these outbursts are theatrical—and, to my layperson’s eye, unprofessional—they are welcome. The sobs, finger-pointing, frantic gesticulating; watching Hollywood’s face curve with a smile or going slack when testimony seems unfavorable; all this affords some small level of pathos, or at least drama. It’s satisfying to watch the illusions of impartiality and civility break, and to see a witness’s tribal urge to humiliate the person they believe to be a bad person.

Good Writing: John Jeremiah Sullivan

John Jeremiah Sullivan
From He Shall be Levi, GQ Magazine

When Rex showed up, he was preceded by someone, a person called Tank. To get to Rex, you must get past Tank. That is unlikely until such time as Tank decides to let you by—which he will do, in that event, with good humor, having assumed his gentle-giant mien. He does 300 push-ups in one set every night before going to bed, and he often goes to bed at three in the morning. He has had some kind of military training. Later, when we knew each other, when we "had history," as he put it, I asked him to let me try on his soft sky blue Sean John baseball cap. It dropped straight to my eyes, loose as a candle snuffer, and my head is so large that a waitress at a country restaurant once told me I looked like "a 40-year-old fetus." Tank's head was slowly swallowing its ears.

----------

It takes some mental effort to recover the feeling of how much he seemed to mean at one time, and practically yesterday. Obama has made him seem kitschy already, has stolen his power to signify. Not presuming anything about one's politics—referring instead to the sheer dynamism of events since the election. We are a couple of beads farther along the necklace of cultural time from Levi. We are post-Levi. It's decadent to think of him now. But the chemical traces remain of a plausibility structure inside which his very face seemed full of information and even warning. Something was happening to the country, it was splitting in two. Levi looked like a place where the ripping might start. We were laughing at him then, too, of course—that was largely it. If McCain's choosing Palin had been cynical (as borne out by their recoiling from each other in defeat), not until his embrace of Levi did things become farcical. September 3, on the tarmac, that was when you knew we had reached some point, some level. The McCains came out to welcome the Palins onto the ticket. It was an introduction and some kind of cryptic archconservative coronation. Wind blowing, Bristol dressed in a crisp khaki dress coat. Suddenly into the group shot hove this Levi, chaw-chomping Levi, young, dumb, and full of comeliness, a self-proclaimed redneck hockey enthusiast, no-kids-wanting-but-no-protection-using Levi Johnston, tricked out like a duck hunter now, granted, not like a serious hunter, but no less ready to kick your ass if you messed with him or manifested homosexual tendencies around him. He was at once a bodying forth of the Bush octad and its whole queasy bargain with American masculinity, and at the same time a captivating time bomb of white Alaskan authenticity, with a tattoo on his ring finger. We knew he was there only because it had been deemed worse for him not to be there. That gave him a curious magnetism. And John McCain, fine, he was trying to win a campaign, he's an opportunist. He's also a United States senator and a war hero, and there was something in how he greeted Levi—how for a second it mattered whether he greeted this boy, and in what manner—like an acknowledgment. Not of one man to another, exactly, but of one force to another. It was either the beginning or the end of something. Briefly recall when you didn't know which.