The hard truth
I often tell myself, reminding that it is reality that defines life, and not life that could define reality. The constraints and limitations are myriad, we can come and resist them to a certain degree, but someday, we will invariably fail.
It is therefore a rule that not everything is achievable. No matter how we wish it be different, some things will all fall far from our grasp. The choice is whether to focus on a doomed prospect, with tragic consequences, and little benefit OR to persist , resolutely in the endeavor DESPITE the hardships, setbacks and calamities. Choosing the former path would be more prudent. Choosing the other would be a matter of insanity.
An insane man, or dare i say, a visionary, who accept no failure in its final sense, continues along the same journey that led us from trees to caves, to huts, to condos. Follwing the principle of an unyeilding advance. Though the cost may be dire.
The word for pistachio in Chinese is 开心果. The "happy fruit". it is a cousin to almonds, apricots, peaches and apples, cherries and roses. A magnificent family of flowering plants, whose simple , fragrant flowers turn to fleshy fruit and hard nut-shells.
But let us look at that smiling roscesid and see that it is a moody beast. Some have a warm, welcoming spread of the lips, graciously inviting you to open them. Others hold their virtue tightly, giving just a hairline hint at the possibility of an opening.
and then there are the few, who bitterly resent the fact that they were treated to salt and oven, to packaging procedures in industrial settings, and harden their closed shell with revenge in mind!
It is a sad truth that the possibility of finding a bag, were EVERY nut has perfectly formed and ripened, then flawlessly picked and artfully baked, is zero. We have not acheived this miracle of agriculture and cookery yet. Nor shall we, i fear. Even the grandest of emperors, who enjoyed a bowl of pistachios , while the plebeans wallowed beneath had suffered by this great unifying failure.
Now, a recalcitrant pistachio can be opened. It is neither a diamond, nor made of titanium. A sufficiantly pertinacious individual, could crush the obstinate nut . they may use a tool of some kind, they may dissolve the shell in sulfuric acid. They may use high explosives, they may collect other similarly 'hardened' nuts, and cook them for a longer time, and THEN crush them. Lasers are a new method for the more adventurous, and diamond-tipped drills have shown success in the extraction of the meat in laboratory trials.
But most people, when faced with a fractious pistachio, carefully place the nut lengthwise between their molars. Useing the running curve of the unruly nut as a guide, they apply the crushing might of their mandibles. Employing no less than six different powerful muscles in concerted effort.
Alas , while the result of this effort may on occasion lead to a total surrender of the riches within, it is more often then not an exercise in futility and perhaps even self-harm.
The crimp of the cloistered nut is , more often than not, a facade. It is a cruel lie!
Consider, friends, that if this seam would have yeilded so obediently to the pressure, breaking along the line , leaving behind two identicle halfshells, it would have done so before, in the oven.
No! This line hides the awful truth of deformity, of malformation, of malicious unevenness, so spread, that the nut will shatter and not halve.
The result is dispair. A crushed nut, leaves small, hard, sharp vengful shardes in the wake of its demise. Many are they, who have injured themselves greatly in the pursuit of such meat.
Aye, meat, there's the rub. Because even if the meat is not crushed alongside the defending shell. It is often burnt, or bitter with hatred.
In the end, the question of reality over life never relents. At times we must rise against this most oppressive of dogmas. But before we do so. Much thought should be given, to the question: are the efforts we are making could possibly advnace our human race, bringing us out of the shadowed forests, or, are the assailments we are engaged in turning us to nutters?