Thursday, March 20, 2008
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tell of how it is
THERE IS A BANANA in my apple tree. It’s growing there. It’s hanging there, halfway up. I threw the dishes down in fright. I made for the backyard. Dear banana, I said. What are you doing in my apple tree, I said, hand to heart. It was silent. It was busy ruining the uniformity of green and red. I tried coaxing it away. I laughed at it shoo-shoo. I tried provoking it. Poor ostracized thing, I said. Unwanted by other seedless tropical fruits, I goaded on. I called it an exile. I called it bad names. An outcast forced to foreign places, I soliloquized. The banana, it hung there stupidly.
I’ll feed you monkeys, I offered. I’ll give you milk and cereal, I said rationally. I got a bowl of it from inside. I ate it. See it’s tasty, I said shoveling with the spoon. The milk dripped down my chin. You can have some too, I said, lactating. When that didn’t work, I tried violence. I kicked the base of the trunk. I shook it. I rammed the apple tree with my pick-up truck. This ought to do it, I said. But the banana stayed. I pointed at it. You bad word bad word, I said. I examined the damage I had done.
My great-great-grandfather had planted it. Now there is a banana in it. I felt guilty. So I climbed it in a style that harkened back to more primitive days. I slashed at the banana. I tried a chainsaw. I tried being nice. Beseech your majesty, I said. But it hung there a bit invincible. So I finally left it alone.
When I got used to the fact there was a banana in my apple tree, I went about my business. I didn’t think much of the resident banana. I didn’t have fitful nights of sleep, didn’t require counseling sessions. I didn’t do much to bother my permanent guest. It never outstayed its welcome. These days it's still there. When others come to marvel at it, I show them. I say there is a banana in my apple tree. And I tell them how it is.
It sure is something else, I say.
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Comments (52)
oh, metaphors, man.
i guess maybe the biggest thing to take from it is that sometimes things just aren't the way you think they should be, but you can't always change them. maybe?
very nice. it sorta makes me rethink worrying about things... ;)
haha. oh, i took it there.
i sometimes wonder if the great literature we know -- the stuff they teach us in high school and college courses -- the way these thinkers read into the writing and come up with so much. i wonder if half of that stuff they get out of a piece of writing was never intended at all. hell, maybe all of it.
i guess that's the beauty of good writing: everybody takes something from it. like a good song that makes you just say ah, that is exactly it. that is exactly how i feel right now. anyway, good work. i was beginning to get restless.
i might need couseling after this one... i always think everyone must be beautiful they are just not in the right place for people to realize it. so we should take the places away and look at the individual without all the circumstances around them and then it is easier to see that everyone is beautiful even when they already were to begin with.
=)
glad you could finally make peace with it!
Everytime I see the word 'banana', I think of something bad. Hahaha.
RYC: Yeah I can see how the word 'Phuket' can be funny
But at first glance I wouldn't find anything weird about it, maybe because I'm Asian and think in an Asian language 
The banana is like so many things in life. We worry at it instead of accepting. Fun reading. Can't wait for the next one.
I like this one, wonderful play with Metaphors I don't know how many prose readers really will get it but sure it is so very well depicted they will understand it well.
The Signature Of A True Human Is The Smile He/She Brings On The Face Of Others.
LonelyPoet
the end, i love how the endings always spin things. or, tie up the ends.
you've read saul williams haven't you? there are just subtle little things or words in your writing that for some reason make me think of him.And you said you never write about any deeper meaning.
=P
expand this, it could be such a great short story!
Brilliance as usual! This story can mean so many different things. Loved it
:) brilliant. i think this can be longer, you should think about expanding it!
Very clever. I would make this out as a didactic allegory on how we all have to accept diversity.
The outcast banana in an apple tree? How do you think up these stories? So clever.
a poor unwanted banana.. maybe all it wanted was to be an apple - made into applesauce and consumed by preschoolers and old women.. but, no. it was born a banana - in the backyard, likely, of a homeowner that didn't even like banana splits. life can be so hard, as a banana in a world full of apples.
You bad bad word ... I love this as always. There is something thought-provoking special in every line.
There used to be an apple tree in my backyard for the longest time. It was a brilliant tree, the only one I could climb for years and years and I loved picking the apples, especially since every time I would try and eat them and every time they tasted nasty, you know? But it was always the anticipation that maybe the next one would be sweet and juicy like the ones I picked off of the apple trees at the tree farm when I was six.
One lightning storm, the tree was struck and fell over. Yet every year until we moved out, roots exposed, it still grew apples. Such an odd tree, I would think to myself. Even when I was thirteen and lost interest in climbing trees or eating their fruits, I would see it and try and wonder why it still kept spawning fruit although it looked clearly dead.
Point of the story? I wish my apple tree had bananas in. Also, you never know what you'll find growing on a tree of uniformity, you never know what nature will throw at you to shear the course of balance. I don't like uniformity. Pah! Balance is for the birds. I want a banana in my apple tree.
oh yes, what's wrong with a little change? just let it be (:
Sometimes I feel like a banana in an apple tree.
I want to ram the tree with my truck. That's the visual I'm carrying with me after this one. I'm mature like that.
Personally, I kept thinking of the word "phallic" as I read this story.
*smile* this one takes the cake. =)
i love it! you're always so creative. ^_^
ryc: there are colors you probably have yet to see ;)
i'd be honored to teach you how to lean in the midst of a cali quake. =)
i first lived in cali in the OC... then moved to vegas... then back to southern california in the 5th grade and stayed in corona until i graduated high school and moved to missouri. i'm excited, i get to go back this summer and stay for awhile! =)
you have an awesome collection! you'll have to take some pictures of all of it someday... or set up that viewing =)
the blowfish would be a very good touch.... just imagine what people would think if you didn't tell them what it was ;)
yeah... definitely prose poem, except for the last two paragraphs. you should check some of them out. my professor was passing around this edition the other day: http://firewheel-editions.org/
a good prose poem is basically a short short story, and why, i believe that's the subtitle of your xanga...
you definitely have the rhythm of a prose poem down.