Planet Nectarius

I emailed them. We’re meeting for coffee and cake

I passed an old friend on the street yesterday.

I kept walking as if I didn’t see them. I have no idea why. It felt terrible. Cowardly. Saddening.

I wish I could turn around, catch up to them and say hi. How’s things? What’s been going on? Are you still working the same place? No I haven’t found a place yet. I think we should go for coffee sometime, and I wont take “yeah we should do that” for an answer. You look well… Healthy.

The path is cracked and weathered. The sides have broken into a jagged rubble. Grass and weeds are pushing up between the cracks. Every second tree is too close, with roots pushing and deforming it into a strange irregular topology.

Still, it’s clearly a path. It comes from somewhere and goes somewhere else. Maybe there is the odd loop or detour along the way, but it certainly covers a long walk. Too far to walk, and here I am walking it.

I’ve been walking along time I guess. So far that I forget the parts from long ago. Every now and then though, a bend or a pothole floods memories of the path behind me.

It winds through the worst parts of the city, squeezed out of mind behind the industrial estates. Other parts through quiet suburban streets where everything is clean and flat. Kids don’t play there, it’s frowned on.

Sometimes I think the path is me. I feel like the city loves me like it loves the path. It ignores it, or forces it to suit it’s dogmas. Who said it had to run straight? Paths like to wind, they like to meander.

One day it will break free of the ground or take the ground with it, but the city will leave it be. Its true nature will shine, as it winds its way to infinity.

Nectarines are the fruit of passion. They hold the sweetest most sincere taste of all the fruits.

Mango’s are all sweet and enveloping, but they don’t hold the subtly of a nectarine.

A nectarine breaths life into your day.

A truely perfectly ripe nectarine is unmatched. On the first bite a drop of syrup will dribble out the corner of your mouth and down your chin, and all you can do is smile.

A smile makes everything okay. Nectarines are the fruit that makes everything okay.

All year I wait for them. Not in earnest, as the memory of my last bite will last me till my next one, always.

A nectarine makes me dance from the inside. I wish more people were like nectarines. I still wait in earnest for another nectarite I suppose.

If humans are like planets, what happens when they crash into each other?

They have to push each other away again, hopefully they can make it into orbit. Usually they disappear back into the black again. Never to encounter each other again. Though maybe they exert distant gravitational forces on each other.

It’s common to get damaged in the process.

“So as a fellow ballet enthusiast, would you like to come with me to see the next one?”

“Do you mean as in a date?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Depends on whether you’d say yes if it was.”

“You’ll only know if you ask.”

“So would you like to go with me to the ballet, as a date?”