I DISCOVERED A NEW FRUIT

I discovered a new fruit. I was travelling through thick forest and found it dangling from a lush, large-leafed bush that thrust it into the light like a gift, or I grew it in a specially-built glasshouse, feeding it thoughtfully selected infusions of filthy mulch and humus. I forget which, and it's not important. Or I found it growing out of some sidewalk growth and identified it not as a weed but a rare treasure. That can happen, and it does. Or something else. I cut two fruits in half and sewed two of the different halves together, and instead of dying and growing mould and rotting, the acids and sugars contained inside combined together and mutated into something wonderfully new. All compelling, all possible. The possibilities represented by the new fruit excited even me, and I was the one who discovered it.

I discovered a new fruit. Where antiquity may have had its shortcomings, such as a reliance on horse-riding, a weakness to plague and trade routes that left much room for improvement, it was capable, from time to time, of being gently turned upside down and shaken by mass fervour for a new fruit. Consider Italian society after the tomato. Consider how the mango reshaped things. Corn. The headwind of corn blew ships back and forth over the Atlantic for centuries. Whatever. New fruits are a novelty we lack to our detriment. Where modernity may have blunted our appetite for armed revolt, perhaps we may still be awoken from our stupor by a new fruit. And perhaps mine will be the one to do it.

To ensure the correct reception for my new fruit I crafted the perfect display vessel. I placed it on a small concave platform, to "cup" the base of the fruit, and attached that to a rod and sank the rod into a wooden base. I covered the fruit and apparatus with a glass bell jar and covered the bell jar with a red satin cloth. I placed it on the passenger seat of my Hyundai Elantra and buckled it up with the care and attention I would give to my seven-year-old nephew Shannon, whose timidity is not yet an obstacle to his success. I drove across town, speeding through every single traffic light, turning at every single corner in sheer giddy wonder and excitement at a world that yet held mysteries that could be squeezed out like juice if we would just roll up our sleeves and grab them and heave and heave. I passed through roaring whirlpools of roundabouts and saw my prospects evaporate down one way streets. I became lost. In an industrial park I rolled up on the kerb and hauled at the brake. I got out of the car - God knows why, although if at a later stage I was to try to understand my own motivations I would guess that I did it in hopes of forging a one-to-one interaction with another human being, which you can not do from the driver's seat of a Hyundai Elantra - and then to avoid my miraculous discovery melting, or sweating, or falling off its perch, or becoming rancid, I unbuckled its seatbelt and carried it with me.

One foot in front of another I stumbled through the backstreets, holding the new fruit I discovered. It was dismaying to have to cart it past such squalor. Filth sloshed around the gutters. Everywhere burnt out shells of cars rusted into powder. Piles of newspaper formed molehills of pulp. Slabs of wet plaster tore off the businesses and slapped down on rubble. Every time a piece slapped down it sent plumes of dust and poison fibres spraying up into the sky, and every time they showered down on the poor, dusty people hanging out of the windows, who coughed and wailed while the steel trusses of their buildings groaned and buckled and more collapsed. On and on it went. I bustled my fruit along, half protective, half desperate to show it to them - they needed to see it, more than maybe anyone else, at a low ebb as they were for appreciating the modern world - and also half aware of how foolish, how effete and bourgeois I would look if I tried to wrestle their attention away from their fragmenting existence to show them a new fruit. "Look! Look!" Shut up. The natural world will die before it can save us. What can you do? What can your fruit do? My internal monologue was now almost unbearably pessimistic. Tears streamed down my face. On a trashed and pockmarked marble plinth I set down the bell jar and, to the encircled jackals, unveiled my new fruit.

They skulked off. I did too. We all skulked off. Eventually the wind, I can only assume, blew the glass jar from the top and a bird came and ate the fruit. Or something else happened. It dried and blew away and came to rest in a ditch. Or rolled under the wheel of a car and was pulverised. All possible. From what I know of fruits the seeds probably ended up in the soil and they probably grew into a new fruit tree. Fruits are ruthless machines built for creating new fruits, and perhaps we can still depend on ruthlessness to prevail, even if nothing else - not wonder, not excitement, not camaraderie, not aesthetics, not dedication, not a spirit of endeavour, not generosity, not stubborn persistence, not courage, not experimentation, not the desire to accumulate property - will. I believe that somewhere my new fruit is growing a new shrub. My new shrub. For someone else to discover, perhaps with more luck.