Pairs

Can the pear tree anything?

I stare at the lonely pear tree in my yard, and wonder about its agency. My own sense of agency is seriously lacking, and I almost wish that these pears could be anthropomorphically treeing me, so that I at least see some distressing figure right before me.

The obligatory pear trees are meant to be calming; perhaps the fruit is some poor linguistic allusion to the devoted pairs of very yesteryear; humans hanging out together, hand in hand, side by side, now rarely even mentioned even in asides.

I can only imagine greater figures; prominent figures; enough money to buy freedom - though this may not even be possible -; some bigger picture; some familiar person from my past; the form of a woman perhaps about to give birth to a baby whom she can actually hold in her arms. I don't think that we're meant to be thinking about such things when staring at our pear trees, but I can't help myself.

I'm one of the lucky ones, really. I've been allowed to travel for work, while many people cannot even leave their homes. I'm an entertainer you see, and, while still giving solo performances and never interacting with any other humans, I entertain the masses by making sure that they always have something new and exciting to watch on television. The powerful people prefer this over people watching old shows from the last half of the 21st century that depict real relationships between people, socializing, physical communication, and companionship. There must always be something new to watch, so I must always do my job.

Still, I come home and I end up staring at my pear tree. Perhaps it's meant to symbolize peoples' roots in their homes, as if thinking about any other roots must be discouraged. One must stare at such a tree, and only think about life since the tree was planted, never before then. Be the tree. Stay grounded for good.

Still, I want to one day stand aside to let crowds past me, then get caught up in them like moving up a tree like a cat; I want to be taken aside by someone and told off or turned on; I want to watch something aside from myself. But all these are nothing more than asides, perhaps whispered, never really clearly heard.

I wrap my hand around a pear like it's another hand, and try to remember what fingers other than my own, feel like. Such pears seemingly allude to a single type of body, much like how fashion magazines of very yesteryear may have alluded to a different figure. Perhaps we now easily see the beauty in every figure, these days, if we have keen minds; if we can even remember what it's like to truly see a lot of someone, eyesight aside.

There are no fences surrounding yards, but yards and yards of soil. We essentially all live in personal molehills not too dissimilar to anthills, but if there are tunnels being constructed then I don't know where they are, which is probably for the best since they should be pretty secret in order to be secure. I can't possibly start to dig one, because I'm certainly being watched at all times, begging the question: am I freer than the average person, or not?

I won't pick the pear yet because it's still not ripe. I won't leave my house again yet because it's still not daylight. I suppose that I COULD pick the pear if I wanted to but I don't, and I suppose that someone somewhere COULD allow me to leave my house and meet someone real, if they wanted to but they don't. Many trees may lose their leaves, and many people have lost the will to ever want to leave their homes.

We are all really pear trees.