Peanuts

I held a peanut in my hand.  I cracked it in half.  The fibers in the shell split from the checkerboard pattern leaving frayed edges.  I slid one half into two halves once again and I felt something break between my finger and thumb.  I removed the no longer held together shell from the meat that was within.  As I did so, it became clear that I had crushed that half of the peanut.  I poured it from one half shell into the palm of my hand where it sat in a little pile like a pile of gravel.  I put it in my mouth, lightly chewed, and swallowed.  I then used both hands to pry open the other half of the shell.  When I did so, the nut within was not damaged at all.  I held the perfect nut between my finger and thumb.  Not even the two halves of itself were separated.  I put it in my mouth and made it more like the first.  It tasted the same.  It was still nutty and slightly oily.  It tasted just like you’d expect a peanut to taste like, but so had the damaged peanut.  Why then, would I bother attempting to preserve shape of all things?  What effect has that on the overall experience or at least on the part that one partakes in the experience for?  Why do I bother questioning peanuts?  What do I think I’ll find?  What am I looking for?  Is there something I’m missing?  Is there something that someone isn’t telling me?  Is there something that I just don’t understand, but nobody realizes because it’s just such an obvious thing that everyone assumes that everyone else already knows it?  Do they see me and know that I don’t know?  Do they laugh at me?  Should I care?  Why?  Why not?  Why am I asking a peanut?  This is absurd.  I’d laugh at myself if I wasn’t myself.  I know I would because then I’d know that at least that person has one more person laughing at them behind their back than I do.  I’d be just a little bit more removed from the critical, burning eye of others that I never see but can feel glaring down on me like a white, spotlight.  Do I only pretend to not care so that I won’t feel, or is it because I think they won’t judge me if they think I don’t care?  All I know is that it is not because I do not truly care because I know that I do.  I care so undeniably much regardless of what I tell myself.  I can hate myself for it, but that doesn’t change just how much I care about how others see me.  I take a breath.  I eat another peanut.  Am I just a peanut?  Is life me?  Did life uncaringly rip me from my shell and into the world turning me into a pile of peanut gravel?  Did life carefully remove my shell leaving me whole to enter the world?  Both wound up the same way at the end of the day.  Would he?  Was there any meaning in the peanut at all, or was I wasting my time looking?

Author: Jackson Palmer

Jackson Palmer is a student studying literature at the Mississippi School of the Arts. He hopes to use the education he obtains there to write novels, short stories, poetry, and scripts for movies, television, and theater productions. Additionally, he would like to write within a number of genres such as comedy, drama, horror, etc. Some of his favorite writers and influences include Billy Joel, John Steinbeck, and Dan Harmon. He hopes to explore concepts and systems of thought such as existentialism, nihilism, and fulfillment within his writing. He would like to thank you visiting his blog and hopefully reading his work. View all posts by Jackson Palmer