The Naming of Fruits

[calico]

We are showing each other things in the City Farm garden. I saw redcurrants there last year, growing close to the ground, and find some for Stephen.
I watch while he eats and hope they are sweet. I don’t expect him to say they are good or not; in tutorials when I used to talk about Foucault and the Order of Things he would listen, and not say anything.

I try to think of something now, a Foucault joke about cabbages not growing next to cucumbers but he gets up quickly and strolls over to where Rachel is foraging in some prickly growth with Dave.
A family of small boys gather round and the skull-capped father studies the follicles on a green red berry:
“Levellers. Not gooseberries. They’re good to eat.”

Rachel peels away the skin and squeezes the ripe centres out for Alethea, who wants more, so I join in, picking and peeling and squeezing until Rachel says she will get tummy-ache.
“They’re called levellers”, Rachel says to the Farm woman with swept-up hair and jeans tucked into her wellies, who shakes her head:
“Jostaberries…you should wait until they’re black.”
“Name?”
“Alethea wants to know your name”.
“Julia. And you’re Alethea. What a fantastic name.”

Dave wants Rachel to make jam.
He tells her to take them all, to make jam. “You just stir them”.
“I didn’t grow up like that”, she says.

She will try, okay, she will try just stirring.
I think of the jam, bulgy and sour, not thickening, too thick.
He takes her arm:
”Do you want strawberries? I’ll bring you strawberries”

He is gone a long time.
“He’s drawn to Alethea”, says Stephen “same mental age.”
“He’s drawn to you all”, I say.
Dave comes back with cherries, which we share.

“I’ll show you the cherry tree”.
He urgently wants to show us the bounty, like I teach young cygnets to knock at the boat, to come back again and again for bread.
On the way to the tree we name things together: a mulberry bush, spring onions, beetroot, chard.
We offer suggestions and agree on names, even when we don’t.

[satyr]

I found this interesting but difficult to grasp. On the surface it seems simple enough; a group exploring a City Farm garden. The members of the group are more difficult to define; the narrator appears to be a lecturer or teacher, the rest of the group may be friends and lovers or children and/or adults. If adults are they 'mentally challenged' or is one a child and one an adult? Would one teach post-structuralism to either of these? Foucault is possibly slightly less opaque than Lacan or Derrida, he does seem to wish to communicate ideas rather than playing word-games with philosophical thought, but he is not as easy as say Russell or Wittgenstein. All I can think is that the key is the title and we are reading a meta-story here about "Les Mots et les Choses" in which case it is clever but unlikely to gain wide circulation.

[calico]

Thankyou very much for the feedback, it is very useful to know that the members of the group and their relationships to each other should be more thoroughly defined. I love your name by the way. My favourite animals.
thanks.

[satyr]

Animals? Minor godlets rather:). I took the name years ago because I lived in the woods and loved wine, women and music and tended towards the ironic:).

I used to find both Chomsky and Foucault interesting, particularly in their views about language. If they formed a thesis and antithesis I never found the synthesis but someone may, sometime.

[calico]

Minor godlets with fluffy knees. Sorry, I'm going to read your work and make some useful comments when not feeling quite so frivolous. Soon!