Death in Car

By chance, I stumbled across a copy of Crash the infamous JG Ballard novel about the combination of sexuality, car accidents, death and freeway-era culture. I've been enjoying a chapter every day over morning coffee, while doing my best to tune out background music, which is part of the dehumanization of modern technology, to bombard people with noise so it's hard to concentrate on anything.

Today, instead of going to a cafe, I walked around the block and into a store, where, sadly, the same old background radio blasts away the daily superficial fluff. I asked the manager about cactus pear. He said cactus pears are filled with seeds. You peel the fruit. Some people with skin conditions eat it. They say it's good for the skin.

Yesterday I bought an Asian pear, for the first time, at the store around the corner. I go to that store nearly every day, to buy food and for the entertainment of looking at the various packages and the general atmosphere. Cote des Neiges hosts a wide variety of small stores. The Asian pear was pristine, no thumbnail marks of strangers, no bruises, a perfect, pale green shape. It was a cross between a green apple and a pear, soft, slightly crunchy, with a slight amonia/mellon after taste.