She

I wish I could eat a peach. Or a strawberry. Or buy a prickly pear from a man who goes by the name, Empti.

I wish to wish, to have, to lust, to crave, to drink, to dream, to seduce, to play, to amuse. But alas, my graceful locks swaddle me in my own darkness, and my mother teaches me to plait them everyday.

And as I grow, they grow viciously around me, until one day, they offer me a fruit. Now, I'm not Pope's Belinda, so why can't I eat a slice? Nibble on it a bit perhaps, and wear the dress of a Maenad? Why can't I make you ashamed of your nakedness, your own truth?

I wish I could eat an apple. Or a strawberry. Hmmm.... I wonder if raspberries are in season.

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Prickly pear: From Eliot's The Hollow Men. 'Empti' (Empty) is an allusion to the hollowness of man; spiritual sterility.

Pope's Belinda: Reference to Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock. Lock/hair symbolized a woman's chastity in the early 18th century English society.
Maenad: Devotees of Greek god, Bacchus. These were wild women with unkempt hair who celebrated sexuality and self-intoxication.

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Conversations of the Mind

Thought I'd share this with you:

One day you'll be blind like me. You'll be sitting here, a speck in the void, in the dark, forever, like me. One day you'll say to yourself, I'm tired, I'll sit down, and you'll go and sit down. Then you'll say, I'm hungry, I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up. You'll say, I shouldn't have sat down, but since I have I'll sit on a little longer, then I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up and you won't get anything to eat. You'll look at the wall a while, then you'll say, I'll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I'll feel better, and you'll close them. And when you open them again there'll be no wall any more. Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.

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Extract from Samuel Beckett's Endgame