Good Peaches and Bad Peaches

Not much can come from writing with emotion, unless of course you are spectacularly gifted at channeling your angst into free verse. Then again, nothing much can come out of intellectualising your feelings either. At some point, we can tend to over analyse , usually because we want to explain away why exactly it is that we insist on treating each other like cunts.

The tendency to over think also makes for pretty dry writing, which is why I shy away from non-fiction. People seem to think that by writing down what happened on a particular day to a particular person, that they are in some way capturing the truth of that moment. But such a telling ignores completely the emotional truth of a situation, which is why we go (or went) to the movies, because a good old-fashioned story can dive straight to the heart of the matter, as it were.

The problem today is that we tend to watch the news or go online to read about the "facts", because in the wake of wikipedia and CNN information is what we crave, rather than truth. So, onto the peaches.

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Once upon a time, there was a young peach who had all the best advantages in life. He had a safe spot on his tree, nestled amongst the branches and the other peaches, safe from the prying beaks of passing birds. But he was not too nestled away that he didn't get enough sun. In fact, his tree was planted in a garden so warm and sun-kissed that he and his brothers grew to be large (but not fat), charming and generally well-rounded peaches.

He had a fine, if rather interrupted education at the hands of the caterpillars who built their cocoons in his tree, before bursting out in a flurry of colour and wings. It was always sad when his teacher-butterflies flew away, but it pleased him to think that they got to soar away over the horizon, to the distant regions Beyond the House, of which he knew very little.

Of course, such a well-rounded peach couldn't be kept on his tree forever, and he was itching to get away and see the world. But his tree loved him very much, and wanted him to stay. They began to bicker about it, especially whenever the young peach wanted to stay up late and watch the moon rise overhead. The tree didn't understand. She thought the garden was the greatest place in all the world, and that any sensible peach would want to stay right there. He could, she offered, even fall one day and land in the rich moist soil and grow into a great big tree himself. Wouldn't he like that?

Unfortunately, he didn't like it at all. He wanted to be free, unshackled, and though he loved his tree, he couldn't think of anything more sedate and fixed as the life of a tree. I want to see Beyond, he would say, whenever the wind shook the tree's branches, whistling about the peaches and whispering too. I want to go where the wind comes from, begged the young peach. I want to talk to the wind and swim in the sea and fly, like my teachers! His tree would shake her branches even more vigorously. There is no Beyond, she would say, and peaches can't fly.

It went on and on, and all the while the days grew shorter, and the wind bit more than it whispered. The young peach began to grow cold, as his fuzz did little to ward of the elements. Finally one day, when we were playing outside, we hit the tree with our ball, and the young peach flew off, landing in the damp grass. We gathered around, curious and hungry, but time and the cold had done their work. The peach was rotten.

Peach in Fed Square, Four Am

It's cold, bitterly cold. The only cars cruising past are taxis, which strangely seem to be refusing most potential patrons. It's late enough that people are just wandering, making up their minds whether to go home or to stay out for another drink.

It's cold and I'm tired enough that it's hard to string together thoughts that aren't incoherent or needlessly bitter. The temperature seems to be able to get beneath by clothes and under my skin. It infects me. A friend once told me that to ignore the biting wind, all you need to do is realise that the wind isn't going through you - it's going around you.

Unfortunately this doesn't really work and so I'm sitting on cafe chair that's tied to the table, and I can hear the sound of people shouting and glass breaking and buses are leaving but I hope they are the wrong buses.

We always hope that they are the wrong buses, foolishly believing that the right one is still to come. After all, don't the chances get better and better, the longer you wait?

Only if you believe the buses will keep coming forever. But if you think they will eventually end, perhaps when the sun pokes up above the cathedrals, then really your chances diminish with each passing bus.

But all this is rather a moot point - useless philosophising while my battery runs out and the cold continues to seep and there's no one to call. And no buses have come past for a while. Perhaps they've already finished? In which case I might follow river down to suburbia. A long walk but at least I might get warm.

Peach Enters the Emerging Writer's Festival Competition

Travellers in search of El Dorado or Atlantis must listen attentively to the natives, who tell of a city without a past – where the people are too busy with the present to stop and look over their shoulders. They say that if you head out beyond the mountains, following the great dirty river that winds its way past well-kept vineyards, you will come across a city that settles on the horizon like a mirage. And no matter how close you get, it always remains there, just out of reach – even as you wander its many grey laneways the city seems unreal to you.

The city is built in such a way that you lose all perspective. Every street seems to head straight on without interruption nor incline nor decline until it passes beyond your vision. Such a flat city causes many travellers to lose their heads, the natives say. They spend many hours underground, throwing their money at polite well-dressed staff who don’t wear watches. The travellers forget the time, their families, their homes across the sea.

To say that the people of this city love their sport is an understatement. They bump and jostle each other on the wide, flat streets with such ferocity that they have little time for love, or politics.

It is a city constantly under construction. Its citizens reinvent their surroundings at every opportunity. The natives will point to themselves as examples, and the traveller sees them transform before their own eyes – noble savages to helpless primitives to national hero to alcoholic. The people welcome travellers because their own ears are already too much abused by tales of glory, discovery and liveability. The city would die if not for the constant influx of travellers who believed in the promise of the mirage they saw nestling on the bay in the distance. It is a city of dreamers.

Secretly, the city realises its own inadequacy. The people know that their fashion is too grey, their laneways too wide and their love too suburban.

Secretly, they hope for an event that will finally put them on the map. (Or at least on a T-shirt).