Peaches and Dialectical Materialism

‘Fuck Ships’ Day…and any other day for that matter’, griped the man in the hat. ‘It just doesn’t make sense…ship of fools I’d say…imbeciles, cockamamie at best.’ The sky, not blue but cobalt or gunmetal, threatened to cave in on the man in the hat’s head, sackcloth gray tittering in absentia inglorious. This was not how it was suppose to be, to be or not to be, so he thought. But then again he seldom thought proper thoughts or thoughts that made sense in a sensible way. Cursed thinking he thought. ‘Abracadabra salamander’ he said, ‘impetigo alabaster amen etc anon et al’. His mother had a penchant for dialects and peach trees, though he cautioned her against drawing hasty conclusions based on nature and philosophy. She had taken a fall from the stoop in front of their modest split-level house when she was a girl and cracked open her tiny skull like a peach, hence her partiality for peaches and dialectical materialism His mother introduced him to Ships’ Day one terribly hot August afternoon when she was fed up with his bickering. She said that if he was good and stopped his goutiness she would take him downtown to Ships’ Day, where she would buy him a funnel of cotton candy and a caramel apple, the kind with a Popsicle stick in it.