20: some peaches, some pictures, and a reminder from Seneca

life is long if you know how to use it

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I cut my peaches with the oyster knife because it’s the middle of July, 
because I like that knife best, because it’s in the pocket of my corduroy shorts, 
which have now faded from the sun and match the skin of this fruit. 
The table is bare except for a shattering of light that pours through the window every morning for an hour or two. I slice a few pieces and then eat 
every last bite down to the pit with sticky, sandy hands. 

As a kid, I was never taught how to eat fruit correctly, always leaving half the thing
uneaten but have since unlearned that habit of wastefulness. 
Do you think there is a correct or incorrect way to eat fruit?
Maybe there isn’t, but what I know now is that there’s so much more 
whenever I’m eating a pear or a plum or a peach, even watermelon slices. 
I leave nothing behind.

I once knew someone who ate apples in their entirety, seeds, core, stem, and all.
Horses do it all the time, he’d say. The experience of eating an apple 
was completely transformed for me. Horses also still run wild and free in the West, 
but there I was in an office building surrounded by glowing screens, 
nodding as I listened to a man claim that we should do something 
just because a horse does it, too. Maybe he was right.

I realize now that half of another year has passed as I sit, eating the peaches, 
trying not to scratch horsefly bites or peel a sunburn on my shoulders. 
Another week spent staring at sandbars, watching fog lift, flying down Commercial. 
On my desk is a copy of Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life. I reached for it on a whim
while waiting to check out at Tim’s, clutched it like the brakes on my bike as I hoped 
to slow down this week, this summer, this year, and this life. 

I used to want to live so fast. I walked fast, slept fast, smoked fast, drank fast. 
Now I want so badly to stop everything for an hour to stand in the tide
and watch the reflection of clouds move across the beach. It's just not that easy.
I am old enough now to know that there's simply not enough to waste,
it's completely possible to linger for too long, and there's no contest 
between something new or something one more time.

Still, there is more to the fruit if you know how to eat it and, as I’m reminded: 
life is long if you know how to use it. 

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That’s all for now. It’s really summer again. Eat some peaches, get a sunburn, drink some beer, shoot some pool, and dive deep down into the ocean, no matter how cold it feels.