EGAD! THEY’VE FINALLY MADE TASTELESS FRUIT!

BEING a “mostly” vegetarian by choice and not obligation, I’ve always been one to favor fruit, something I’ve never regretted, being also a hedonist, epicurean and succulent fruit lover. However, every year for the past ten or so, the fruit in the grocery stores has continued to improve visually indirectly proportional to smell and taste as well as ripeness and sugar content. Today I bought a package of apricots, one of my personal, seasonal favorites. Grown in the good ol’ USA, under strict USDA guidelines, or so I assume, given that there is no label information on herbicides or pesticides used. Thoroughly washed, I held the visually perfect apricot in hand while I took a large bit, breathing in what should have been the complex, invigorating aroma of a ripe apricot. To my surprise, it had no smell and no taste. Not even sweetness (though admittedly not bitter like fruit picked far before it’s time). It had the apricot texture and look, but absolutely nothing else. Then it struck me that fruit producers and grocery stores had at last succeeded in producing perfectly tasteless fruit. Aside from texture, it might as well have been a small plum, peach or nectarine. One tasteless all.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not another vicenarian who hasn’t ever tasted a “real” apricot, plum, peach or nectarine. And I don’t suffer from post-COVID anosmia. On the contrary, I’ve spent several months in Japan, where farmers molly-coddle their veggies and fruit, enticing them to visual, textural, olfactory and gustatory perfection including just the right sweetness for the specific variety. So I know how a good fruit should and could taste, even given the limitations of commercial agriculture. Sadly, I know how a good apricot should smell and taste, but fear I am one of the last living beings with both the knowledge and experience. And by the way, is there anything as sensual or erotically exciting as a truly juicy, ripe apricot or peach? Could that be why today’s birthrates are dropping? Go figure.

In my newest book, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor, I deal specifically with this problem. What, at the least, is lacking today is a conscious realization that plants, like animals and humans, are living things. They’re not just a sales product. We absolutely need plants in order to to exist. It’s about respect for that which we, as a top predator, can not exist without. It’s about a sense of stewardship for the planet which sustains us. And ultimately, it’s about balance. Koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi’s would say. Balance in all things so that the organic living whole Gaia doesn’t dis-integrate and life ultimately ceases to exist. Like Mars? Go figure.

Naming the animals and plants after themselves…? The idea was to inspire feelings of environmental stewardship through government established and funded official Naming Ceremonies—N-Cares—whereby human caretakers and the animal or plant names of their now ‘cultivated natural’ darlings would be publicly announced, ceremoniously celebrated, then recorded digitally in ever-expanding governmental N-Cares information vaults called I-Cares.” The honor caught on and the practical result was immediate: I-Cares, in essence governmental genetic diversity repositories, sprang up everywhere, and awardees gladly paid for public recognition, contractually committing themselves to husbanding the animals or plants which they had name-recognized for the duration of the human’s life. As a further honorific, caretakers were permitted to wear a light blue colored armband. At the same time, the government inserted a tiny, inert, bioluminescent DNA tag into the now protected entity, identifying it as under the care and protection of the government by way of that particular human caretaker.

The Edge of Madness

Kindle version on sale for $1.99 through May 2021 — also available in printed format; soon to become an audiobook read by the incomparable Peter Pollock. Purchased for manga, animation and cinematic treatment by K. Simmons Productions.