Post About Solnit.

When I read "The Faraway Nearby", I thought that the metaphor behind the apricots is a good example of our inconsistency. According to the apricots in the book, we change over time, even when we cannot see ourselves that anything has changed. We age, we learn, and we sometimes become entirely different people over time, often when least expected. Like Solnit's mother's Alzheimer's, which could not  be anticipated at first, the disease changed her mother as a person entirely. Day by day nothing had really changed, but back over weeks or months, it is apparent that everything has changed, much like the apricots. First, they are picked fresh off of the tree, then they could follow a few different paths, like us with our paths in life. The fruit could get set on a kitchen counter, being forgotten and rotting within a week or two. Or, they could be canned and stored in mason jars, lasting for a year or more before they begin to expire and eventually turn into a pungent liquor. This is how our lives go, different choices leading us down different paths, determining our fate in a way that we can often not predict.