Fruit Flies Like a Banana
It’s an old joke, and genuinely funny, because of the surprise at the end: “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.”
To me, it contains some unexpected wisdom, comparing the arrow of time to the cycle of time, and placing its bets squarely on time’s cycle.
The great Stephen Jay Gould—paleontologist, geologist, and baseball historian—wrote a book called “Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle.” Oversimplifying greatly, time’s arrow is scientific time, deep time, geologic time, always moving forward on an extremely long, internally consistent timeline. Time’s cycle is Biblical time, circular time, the cycle of the seasons, of growth and decay, the movement of the planets in the sky, a clockwork universe.
Those of you who have been reading me for awhile can guess where this is going.
I’ve been blowing through anniverseries like a speeding car blasting past roadblocks. It’s the time of year for it. My sister and my Mom were both born in August, two days and twenty-ish years apart. They both died in September, two days and ten years apart. Those four dates are burned into my life, not so much as calendar dates, but as a time of the year, the transition from summer to spring, the first hint of coolness in the air, the lean of afternoon light, the constellations that hang above the mountains at twilight. I feel these anniverseries in my body before I see them on the calendar.
They arrive with varying degrees of joy and grief. Some years the impact is great, when for about a month I am awash in memories, good and bad, a heady mix of joy and regret. Other years, the reminder is as gentle as a leaf settling on my shoulder, a passing touch of a loved one, the feel of a cat’s fur rubbing against my leg.
Regardless of the effect on any specific year (this year it was pretty harsh), the constant is time’s cycle. The specific events, the births and the deaths, are a product of time’s arrow, they happened on particular days that can be marked on a timeline. My sister and my Mom died 3,654 days apart. I had to Google the two dates to get that 3654 number. The anniverseries of their deaths, the yearly return, are only two days apart. To know this, I don’t have to Google anything, or consult any calendar. I can feel it in my bones. It is as real and immediate as the sun rising, the stars revolving.
Which is why I find that old “fruit flies like a banana” joke so unintentionally profound. You can talk all day long about time’s arrow, and how the idea of “deep time” helped usher in a new scientific age by overthrowing the old Biblical way of looking at history.
Fruit flies don’t care. They know only that fruit ripens, and fruit rots. They know they are hungry. They know they like bananas.
Peace.
The links. As always, if you like my writing, yadayadayada.
August’s story: Monster
July’s story: Goodneighbor.com
June’s story: Feral
May’s story: Nine Lives
April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors