Goines On: Had he died but not realized it?

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As Goines began the day’s walk, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t already died and was just walking around in a daze imagining he was still alive. If that were so, then – in some sense anyway – there was life after death. If you could call the way he was feeling life.
    Why do you feel this way? He asked himself – aloud, for he was dictating his thoughts into his iPhone. The day before had been one chore after another from getting out of bed at 6 a.m. until 4 p.m.: he did the usual daily household chores before they drove to Chapel Hill and Durham to do errands, and then carry in and put away their purchases at the Wild Bird Center (a 50-lb bag of sunflower chips, which the spunky young woman tending the place had easily carried to the car for him, but which he struggled to even get out of the car at home) and at Costco. And then help Mrs. Goines prepare lunch, and then eat lunch and clean up the kitchen again before doing a few more chores he couldn’t even remember now. But he did remember feeling at times as though he might fall down – not fall down and break something, but fall down dead, no delay.

15 Years Ago Today: “I don’t believe that x” ≠ “I believe that not-x”

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 4, 2006.]

Last night I sliced open that one Fuyu persimmon from this year’s harvest [on Ironwood Place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina], preparing twenty or thirty thin slices for our dessert. (There was only the one fruit because, after last year’s Fuyu harvest of over 300, I apparently pruned the tree more severely than I should have. I won’t go into the theory of persimmon cultivation; anyway, my imperfect practice of it tends to disqualify me from stating it.)

By simple domestic beauty...

...dazzled

By Moristotle

Last evening, as I was bringing in the bird feeders (to protect the seeds and thistle from overnight deterioration from moisture), the waning light was just sufficient to dazzle me with the beauty of our back yard. Thanks to my almost always-handy smartphone for its adequate camera:

Trestina for end of year's persimmon season

Year's season for persimmons has ended

October-November was their season.
We had a wonderful harvest this year
Of eighty-one delicious persimmons.

Persimmons in sestina (completed)

The fourth and fifth stanzas appeared on Monday, October 15. Today we conclude with the sixth stanza and the terminal envoy. We have also improved the phrasing of some of the lines from Mondays before. Enjoy!

Persimmons in sestina postponed to Nov. 5

To make way for important election pieces by Ken Marks, we've postponed the final stanza and terminal envoy of "Persimmons in sestina" two Mondays, to November 5. They'll keep.

Persimmons in sestina (4th & 5th stanzas)

The second and third stanzas appeared last Monday. Today we add the fourth and fifth.

Persimmons in sestina (2nd & 3rd stanzas)

I started writing "Persimmons in sestina" last Monday without André, who indeed would like to have joined me, but couldn't:

I'm glad that you've gone ahead and started one on your own, as it may be a couple of weeks before I can start mine. I'm eager to see what you will produce; I imagine it will be a challenge to keep to your timetable for each stanza.

Persimmons in sestina (first stanza)

When my cousin André visited us two weeks ago and he accepted my invitation to write about the Harvest Moon, he asked me whether I'd ever read Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Sestina" and later wrote that:

I like to read her poem in late September, especially on a rainy day like today. In a sestina, the final words of each line of the first stanza (six lines) are reused for the remaining stanzas, but the order in which the words appear are different each time.

Persimmon tree very pretty

When I was just about fifty, my wife she said to me, “Come here and take a lesson from the lovely persimmon tree. ’Simmon tree very pretty, but the ’simmon branch get heavy and sometime need support, so the fruit of the poor ’simmon can ripen, and be sweet enough to eat.”
    With apologizes to Peter, Paul, & Mary and their “Lemon Tree,” I'm a happier man and wiser now that I propped a limb of our Fuyu persimmon tree with a wooden pole on Saturday and installed some bungees from three rebar posts around its trunk.
    As I reported on July 4 (“Green persimmons”), I’ve already removed over 80 young persimmons (about half), but the increasing weight of the remaining fruit is taxing our tree's uneven branching, with six to eight weeks still to go to full maturity.

Persimmon art

The image to the right caresses my eye so seductively, it's currently the wallpaper on my Motorola Droid. And a neat thing about it is that I created the effect entirely on the Droid itself (from the original photograph shown in the July 4 post, "Green persimmons").
    Below are four more effects. They resulted from irreproducibly playing around, so I can't specify a recipe or formula.

And sometimes we just need to stop

And photograph our persimmons before we've harvested them all

They're Fuyu persimmons. Two to three inches in diameter.
    We planted the tree about sixteen months ago. Good harvest for such a young tree. We've probably eaten about a third of this year's harvest.
    For breakfast, I slice and dice half of one to go on my cereal, with yogurt and nonfat milk, and my wife eats slices of the other half.
    For dinner, I put slices on our Romaine salad, along with slices of tomato, cucumber, and radish, and some walnuts and almonds. Though not terribly sweet, persimmon slices seem quite sweet on a salad.

Persimmon Harvest

This weekend at my home was the persimmon harvest:


The larger, shaplier persimmons are Hachiyas, the smaller, more pumpkin-colored persimmon is a Fuyu.


The Fuyu tree yielded over 300 fruit last year, but after a severe pruning, it yielded only a single fruit this year. Ironically, I pruned the Hachiya tree even more severely, because it grows taller and I spent hours last year harvesting its 150 or so fruit.


My wife and I agree that the Fuyu is a better tasting fruit than the prettier Hachiya. But still again this year, I will bake my traditional persimmon cakes and cookies for the other ten households on our cul-de-sac.

For recipes for persimmon puddings, cookies, cakes, pies, bread, jams, salads, fudge, butter, chutney, salsa, flans, filling, topping, yogurt, ice cream, gelatin, cheesecake,..., you could do worse than visit this web page from down under.

Here's the Hachiya tree right after leaf fall (a couple of weeks ago):