By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
“The soon to be critically acclaimed writer went to the mount of olives”.
Scratch that – it’s sounds far too bombastic, I realised.
“The up & coming, unheralded writer, went to the deli for his favourite olives”.
Scratch that – that sounds to stock, I thought.
“The self-deluded would-be post midlife crisis blogger went to the supermarket for those delicious olives”.
Scratch that – it’s all a bit too ‘comedic’ sounding, I theorised.
“He was professionally invisible, beleaguered, half stoic, & now ‘pushing fifty’. He liked to buy tasty-ish deli olives that he could barely afford”.
Ok, let’s go with that – after all, self-deprecating, hang-dog type characters are all the rage right now – & perhaps always have been, I concluded with confidence.
So, now that opening line was done, I went to get the olives. The Green, & sometimes Black Olive was my current shall we say – snack penchant. I was lucky today as they were on sale – but more to the point -what the fuck is a guy like me buying expensive upper-middle-class olives? But then again they could be faux ‘Rock Star’ rider olives. They could also be ‘the last bastion snack of a doomed man’ olives. The narrative always has flex.
But lets for arguments sake say they are upper-middle-class olives. To say that might seem weird – but what can I say? – I had always been a class conscious guy. Experiencing poverty as a child makes you like that for life – even if you get rich one day. That’s how someone with one hundred million dollars can genuinely think that they are poor. They’ll look at the guy with two hundred million dollars. When they get two hundred they look at the billionaire. Comparing – It’s a nasty nasty affliction we humans have. Sometimes I’m no different to anyone that does that.
HOW DARE I BUY MIDDLE CLASS OLIVES!, said my overly harsh inner voice.
Is that my Superego or my Shadow speaking?, I overthink to myself.
I think it’s my Superego – If it was my shadow I’d probably be thinking shoving them up some retired mean schoolteachers nose. Jung won that round, too bad Sigmund – better luck next time, said my brain
I was standing in front of the perspex counter, looking at the trapped olives. The large square container at the deli had one quadrant that had far greener & fresher olives than the rest of it. Clearly they had been given ‘pride of place’ by the deli manager. The sad, tired looking ones in the container housed the half decaying olives. My mind observed the following factoid:
Those are the unlucky ones, the ones raised by divorced welfare single olive parents who were pharmacologically challenged (thanks to their selfish forcebly assigned ‘Auschwitzian prison guard’ krank-olive-doctors no doubt!).
Sure, I kinda had a soft spot for that ‘motley crue’ lot, those ‘distressed olives’ in that lower-east-side of the bowl. But tastebuds are tastebuds after all. So feelings aside, I used cold logic & bought the ‘good ones’ from the upper-east-side of the bowl.
I guessed that ‘oasis quadrant’ that housed the privilidged plump olives, was the upper-east-side real estate which housed the olive-kids & their executive-career-olive-parents (that were still together for the kids). They all hung out safely-all-together in that corner where they were well nourished, warm & ‘planning for their inwvitable golden futures’.
I guess you can tell with all this psyco-babble that I’m projecting. My class riddled ‘olive world’ is analogous to my ‘human world’ – I guess you think I’m just a madman huh?. It’s a fine line my dear reader – a fine line. And anyway since when does a madman either a) admit he’s a madman; or b) know he’s a madman in the first place? Of course such foolish solipsism can be like candy to the troubled mind – but now that I’ve been around the block, at least now I know that. Now back to concrete reality for a second or two.
So, the happier than you would expect deli lady scooped the comfy-upper-class-olives out from what they thought was their safe ‘partially gated community’. She put them in a oh-so-shitty cheap wafer-thin container as is normal these days. Then she put a price sticker on it. Then she put the whole thing in a plastic bag, because she knew that the crappy plastic container was sure as anything going to leak or break in two. Those snobby complacent olives sure must have got a ‘rude awakening’ just now, I thought as I walked to the checkout. Was that that just ‘tall poppy syndrome’ talking?, I thought about my thought. I could tell you about my thought about my thought about my thought – but that would be overkill.
Five minutes after the as-usual payment to the partialy confused, slightly crosseyed & almost grumpy checkout lady, I was back my rental studio. It was a nice walk home. I heard only two screams, one gunfire shot, & one gateside yapping Shih-Tzu dog. Pretty standard stuff. So I sat on the old couch & put the stuf on the coffee table. I pulled one of these formally privileged upper-middle-class olives out of its cheap ass plastic container, somehow it hadn’t broken or leaked.
Call me crazy, but my mind told me it was now time to talk to the olives. Hey you! – don’t judge me, we all have to blow off steam in our own way – & hey, it’s totally safe & harmless. I couldn’t help but think of that old cartoon charachter called Popeye. I started talking to the olives sitting there in front of me in the now open lid container ‘in character’ as Popeye.
Sorry me’s olives – but you have suffered a big fall in your socio-economic status’s – you are about to be eatens by this aging nobody, who mays not even make the footnotes’s of history, even if he lived for one thousands of years!
Then of course, I did the obligitory Popeye laugh you know the one that has all the consecutive ‘ugs’.
Now it was time for the bilateral human-to-olive trade talks to begin. I had waged the opening gambit with my Popeye schtick, & now was time for their right of reply. Of course I didn’t expect an olive to start talking at all.
I could now hear the olive, held securely between my thumb & forefinger, scream at me loud – well, loud for an olive. It was about as loud as is a baby bird does when it peeps at its mother to feed it. The words it spoke were surprisingly clear. The olive talked in a clipped, slow, & earnest tone, kinda like how people talked in those old black & white Hollywood movies – I think they called it a continental accent…its reply went like this:
“That’s ok you fool – don’t you remember what was said on the mount of olives – of course all us olives cannot ever forget that – for obvious reasons. Be happy in your meekness, you may still yet inherit the Earth!”
That olive’s words almost brought me to tears. I could be emotional simetimes. Age does that even to the most hardened barnacle. In fact, I was almost so moved, I was about to plant it so it might re-generate. But then I realised they were pitted olives – there was no seed to grow. I was way too hungry anyway for such shennanigans anyway. So down the hatch did this seemingly polite & probably golden-rule-obeying talking olive go. I threw it up high & it came down straight & hit my tongue. It was screaming all the way too. That poor olive’s potential trade talks were now over.
I thought to myself – should I go see a psychologist? Should I call a doctor? After all, surely this was all a hallucination – who had ever heard of a talkign olive?! I had, like everyone else these days, been overly stressed lately. Maybe I was finally finally going mad. Too many late nights, too many books, too many screens. Dare I break my now a decade old rule & consult one of those quack doctor goons?
Then I answered myself in true the scar-tissue remains fashion.
No don’t trust those fuckers – those mainstream medico narc sellouts! Docs! Psycologist! Counsellors! They are probably the reason your seeing & hearing talking olives in the first place – what with all those anti depressants, those benzo’s, those Elvis like-qualuudes & uppers-in-disguise-as-medicine they once shoved down your throat for three decades! We’ve all been their bloody mules for way too long! All of us zombified just so they can impress their social climbing walking dead fellow mortician-in-disguise friends! All so they can live on the poncey hill! We are their unwitting mules god damn it! Mules!
I took a few breaths & calmed myself down. Sometimes I got a little carried awaywith thoughts of social justice. That was the angry young man still in me. It’s also easy to still sometimes go off like that when you suddenly find yourself middle-aged, as every one my age does. And he sentiment was correct – most doctors sold out long long ago. I was wise to be doc-weary. I assume the olive community are much the same in their sentiments towards their olive-doctors. Now that I’ve broken the ice & started talked to them, perhaps they’ll sympathise.
Ok yeah, I get it – after than last paragraph I must sound still like a real madman, but I’ll say it again – it’s a fine line between madness & genius. And yes, you are right – all madmen like say this. I’d rather be ‘talks to olives mad’ than be ‘works nine-to-five in an office chicken coup for forty years mad’ anyway. Normality is a much worse form of madness than anything I ‘ve got.
I decided I won’t worry about the talking olives, or my accute but also hopefully only temporary psychosis – whichever of the two it was, I couldn’t be sure – or perhaps it was even both. They were really talking olives and I was a really halucinating insane person. I thought to myself:
I’ll keep just this inoffensive, totally anodyne, largely humorous potential ailment to myself. I mean many rich bastards would pay a lot for the chance to hear talking fruit! Why not just keep listening? After all – that fucking olive gave me some great advice! It’s all in the privacy of my own home, I mean rental. Maybe there really is more confucious-like ‘olive advice’ on its way? There’s only one way to find out.
I took another one out of the nasty plastic bag encased, cheap plastic container, held it up between thumb & forefinger about a foot from my face. I looked at it intently with my over used, small-font-addled, squinted-dusty-eyes, & waited for this new olive to talk. All of this was all so much fun!
One minute passed – not a peep. Thats ok, having adhd had always made me impatient – but I was self aware about it. As the ancient stoic philosophers had said – you gotta know thyself. I told myself I’ll just steel myself & wait longer! I waited five minutes, which seemed like an eternity – I was about to put some muzak on to help combat the boredom, when I finally I heard something – this time it was a deep baritone voice.
“You know, you human beings are total losers – you should never have moved away from hunter-gather society – that was how your supposed to live”.
I was relieved to hear these second olive’s words that I punched the air like I was at a old-timey rock concert, & let out a small repressed ‘woo-hoo’ as my muted celebration – muted so that I didn’t frighten the olive into silence. Maybe olives were a bit skittish like cats were. After all, I was a giant of a giant to something as small as a talking olive – surely they’d go all ‘fraidy cat’ easily. I then asked the olive to elaborate on its words. The olive seemed happy to talk on.
“Well my human friend, the hunter-gatherer system was designed so that the Earth was like your totally free, always well-stocked supermarket. You all happy, hairy & wiffy loinclothed-folk just walked around & took what you wanted – you didn’t need to go to a third party & ask for a job, so you could get a few pieces of paper, or digits on a screen. You didn’t then have go to fourth party who will, if they like you enough, then give you an wilted olive – or a cold-store strawberry or whatever. And that’s all if you have enough paper money or screen money for that days inflated price!. Look human man! – that madness can’t work well – & its not supposed to either! I don’t know why most you enslaved worker-humans have put up with all that malarkey for so long! – its ignorant! cowardice! wilful blindness!”
Wow, I thought to myself – this one really is a genius! I’m beginning to have great luck with these wise talking olives! They are paying out wisdom like no tommorow! What were the chances! Soon if I keep plucking out new olives, maybe I’ll get one that will really really really blow my mind! – like one might tell me if time travel to the past is actually possible! They might tell me the sci-fi dream of how to build a time-machine! I now thought of all the best potential answers to all of Physics, Science & History’s most intractable or squashed questions. I listed them in my mind, one after the other.
…Yes modern day humans have been genetically interferred with by the Pleiadians one hundred thousand years ago…Yes Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset….Yes Jesus was actually the son of God but he got well sick of carpentry…No of course we never went to the Moon, not with those deadly Van Allen belts…Yes the ‘gerbil story’ about Richgard Gere was a total fabrication, it was actually a mouse…..Yes the Pyrimids were made using cast limestone…Yes the big bang theory that the universe came from a quantum fluctuation is total horse-shit…
This was all ultra-exciting to me, a so-called over-thinker. All the biggest questions slash mysteries slash conspiracy theories answered! Yes with this container full of possibly more than Einstein-smart-talking-olives, I may have found something akin to Socrates meets Pandora’s Box meets the Ark of the Covenant! I couldn’t contain my exitement but I was also distracted. I dropped this new Socratic olive onto the floor. The talking olive didn’t like too see such clumsy exhuberance, or should-I-say, ‘flagrant olive abuse’.
It started to yell profanities at me. This time it changed how it sounded – just a little. the voice was still deep, but it sounded just a bit more like a New Yorker this time.
“Fuck you, you dopey human asshole, fuck you, you damn smelly cunt, I tried to help you & this is how you repay me!!?? I’m down here on some fuckin’ crusty dusty matt with rogue peanuts, popcorn, m&m’s, potato chips, used skidmarked undies, mega-dirty socks…& what’s that – that looks like a pubic hair! A pube – a bloody pube! How dare you treat a genius, highly educated upper class olive like me like I’m one of those yellowing scumbags in the lower-east quadrant of the supermarket deli bowl – have some respect! Don’t you know who I am for crissakes!?”
Oh well, I thought to myself. This reminds me of what Jung said about a persons dark side – their ever present ‘shadow’. Everyone eventually will show their ‘Jungian shadow’ in public – there deepest darkest flaws & desires…..even a would be upper middleclass, philosophically gifted, highly educated, super high IQ , sentient deli olive.
I left him there while he kept spouting off at me like an ex world war two sailor – I fifured he’d soon grow tired & shut up. This was dissapointing. It discouraged me. I decided to quit while I was ahead. These olives while clearly geniuses were also way too volitile. You can’t ever truly have one without the other. I’d had my fun, & now it was over. If I didn’t end all this sillyness now, It would only get worse. My mind then went juvenile or at best sophomoric with typical catestrophic thinking:
Maybe the next olive would shove itself up my nose. Maybe the one after that would try jump all the way up my ass!. Some people out there might even like that! What if I like that! Hell! – maybe the one after that would attempt to go into the eye of my penis! – & what if I like that too!. Then not long after after that, it’ll get even worse – eventually one of those little fuckers would offer me a never-ending, nine-to-five job, with ever decreasing real pay & benefits, & sit me next to a bunch of highly-urbanised-soul-destroying-passive agressive-living-Big-Pharma-sponges-filled-with-anti-depressants-&-anti-anxiety-pills types.
Then I had an even more dark dark thought indeed.
Maybe one out of those hundred odd olives is a psycopath olive!….it might try to do away with me!…it might try to choke me into oblivian! It would, after all, be the perfect ruse! Who would suspect anything suspicious when they hear someone died from choking on an olive! I mean, it’s so common it’s a cliche! I can’t let any of that bad stuff happen…I won’t let that happen…I just can’t let that happen!.
So I decided the only thing to do was to ‘pull the band aid off’ quickly. I had a quick & nasty plan. I’d order a pizza & put the rest of them genius but also potentially murdurous olives out of their misery. The plan would be that I’d tell them the pizza was just “a nice bed for them to rest on”. They’d then go out relatively peacefully as they sleep, as extra topping getting that gets crushed by the deadly jaws of my grinding teeth. If somehow I swallowed one alive whole, my stomach acids would make short work of them. It wasn’t the perfect plan, but it’s all could come up with at the time, at short notice, with limited resourses.
The plan wasn’t fulproof of course, but plans under pressure are rarely anywhere near perfect. At least it was A plan. It was the plan of a either probable madman who thinks olives are talking to him, or a realpolitik plan of a suitably worried, now middle aged, finally sensible, totally sane man, who had had the bad luck to be the first person to talk-to-the-smart-but-could-be-deady-olives. I told myself:
Yes the plan ain’t perfect, but you know that saying – ‘don’t let good be the enemy of perfect’ so the ‘olives-fall-asleep-to-their-demise-on-a-faux-bed-of-pizza-plan’, will just have to do do.
Now that I’d thought my way to that pragmatic decision, I felt slightly better. But I could also npw suddenly hear them all shriek in horror collectively as they awaited their fate in their shitty plastic dish-home. The olives sounded like how people panic before they stampede suddenly out of a room with some real or imagined threat in it. It was like they all suddenly somehow knew their fate. I had the worrying realisation:
But I hadn’t said any of my thoughts out loud – not even a murmer! – so this could only mean that they could read my thoughts, these are not just genius-could-be-deadly-olives – they’re genius-could-be-deadly- telepathic olives! Man these olives are not just smart – they can harness the supernatural! Imagine that! Reading my thoughts!
Dispite the olives’ screams, & the shock that they were also mind-readers, I was about to still go with the ‘go to plan’ & dial up the pizza man. I mean what was I really that worried about? The olives after all had no arms or legs – they couldn’t go anywhere, grasp any weapon, and also I was much much bigger than them by well more than four orders of magitude. I’ll just tell them that they are much mistaken about my pizza plan, that their mind-reading telepathy is way way off due to the electric storm happening outside, & what they just really need is to rest on this comfy warm custom made pizza bed that I’ve kindly organised.
As I was lifting my phone to seal their fate, a knock at the door came. I ignored it, thinking they’d soon lose interest & walk away.
Bang Bang! Open up!
I ignored it. I stayed as still as sleeping cat – and quieter. I was worried the olives would scream for help. For some reason they didn’t – they must have been slightly shocked.
Bang!..Bang!..Bang..Bang,,Bang!.
The knock rang out ominously. I ignored it agian. Now I was pissed off. I just wanted this olive-murder-via-pizza-plan to play out without hassle, without a hitch. I wanted to be left alone again. I wanted my simple boring sans talking olives life back.
I just wanted for those alternatively talking silver-toungued-devils & then foul-mouthed-little-bastards to be dead. Given the risks that their intelligence & supernatural abilities showed, I now didn’t care a jot for their company or any of their cosmic or society shifting revelations. i just wanted my old, imperfect, life back. This stuff was just the sensible thoughts of prudent risk management.
I was now lazer focused. I now only wanted the transactional company of the pizza delivery guy at my door with the pizza in at most half an hour. Whoever was rapping on the door was a stick in my spokes of my no-more-talking-olives plan. Then it got worse – there was now a much bigger almighty racket.
CRASH! SPLINTERS! DOOR BROKEN INTO SMITHEREENS! TWO GUYS IN BLACK CAME IN LIKE A FLASH & LIFTED ME SQUARE OFF MY FEET!
One of them spoke up with a clear confidant authoritarian voice, with a slight hint of otherworldiness thrown in to the accent.
“Hey man, answer you fucking door why don’t you! – We have just had an instant report hit our screens from a series on anonymous sources coming from inside this address – the report says you’ve been casting disparaging opinions on the gracious unquestionably good pharmalogico-medico-banking-mass-slave-I mean-mass-employment-system here on Earth…how dare you try to ruin what you..er..I mean what we’ve all worked for centuries to as perfect as possible!”.
The Guys in Black worked fast. My resistence was too slow, too futile. They dragged me with my heels dragging out to their unmarked sleek late model black car, parked around the side street. I didn’t bother to make a scene, I didn’t struggle, I didn’t yell, yelp or even squeak for help. I just did the ‘dead weight’ thing as they both struggled to drag me from behind with my feet dragging.
While being dragged, my brain wasn’t firing so good. I could only think of what the bad hollywood movies had told me all my life. As such, I mentally prepared myself for a long arduous night in some small poorly lit interogation room, where nothing I said would be accepted, I’d at least get a black eye & a kick to the shins, a punch in the gut, until I inevitably caved in under the pressure. I didn’t want that, so I’d have to get my brain firing again & come up with some wild better-than-excellent mega persuasive explanation. I thought to myself forlornly:
Man those little green fuckers are good….real stratospherically good….perhaps far too good to be true!…they somehow must have telepathically called the Guys In Black in!….I’m either a totally insane fool who thinks olives are speaking to me, or I’m a victim of an elaborate secret service hoax…or maybe these goons are from some off-world planet!
They buddled me up unceremoniously in the back of their seek longer than long, shiny tinted black sedan. Then I either had an epiphany or some more accute but hopefully temporary psychosis – it could only be one or the other. Then suddenly I went from utter-super-scared-dejection to the ebullient happiness of outright-revelatory-elation.
I had jsut realised this was the best fun I’d had in over twenty years! It’s funny how it took some talking olives slash temporary insanity slash being the subject of a secret service slash extra-terretrial intelligence invasion operation to admit to myself the cold hard brutal truth:
My life had become far too boring for too long, & I really should be getting out more.
With this epiphany, I didn’t care what would happen in my external world – no matter how rediculous. What would be is what would be. It was only my internal peace that mattered. The horrible interrogation would be fine. The philosophically talking & worldly but bad tempered olives now resting or plotting alone together happily on my couch would be fine. The possibly deadly Guys slash Aliens in Black driving me somewhere horrible to be beaten to a pulp would be fine. If all this was a elaborate halucination brought on by temporary or permanent psychosis, then that would be fine. If things wouldn’t ever be fine at all, and that was it for me – then even that would be fine too.
In a nutshell, I tend to agree that these green olives must be very good for you – in the end. Especially the too ego driven, far-too-smart-for-their-own-good talking kind. They are the best! I mean thanks to them, here I was face down in the back seat of a mysterious sedan having an amazing life affirming transformative transfiguring epiphany! Still even so, it is also true that these Guys In Black kidnapping me there in the front seats still made me a least a little bit hell-of-a-nervous. But I guess these talking olives, be they the black morphing kidnapping type or green genius type, have all got to stick together.
We people could learn a lot from them for sure, I thought to myself calmly. Then one of the Guys in Black piped up from the front seat.
“Hey I think your wrong pinkskin, I don’t think your types will learn nuthin’ from us – after all, haven’t you heard that ancient saying of yours – you can’t reason with a madman? Now stop thinking so much, it’s hurting my ears!
I didn’t let the harsh words totally ruin my new love-filled mental plateau. Still face down in the back seat, I had the very calming & ego-less thought.
Hey it was high-time we here on Earth had a change of ownership anyway! Call me crazy, but why not be led by super-intelligent talking mind reading, body morphing olives? They couldn’t fuck it up any more than we have anyway! Maybe that;s why we were here in the first place – to welcome them & give them the keys! Ahhh….call me crazy, but I reckon we do need an Olive-Revolution!
Suddenly the long black car came to a type-screeching halt. One of the Guys in Black, was now standing there with the passenger car door wide open looking sheepish. He intimated with his hand that I was free to go. I didn’t bother asking questions or hanging around. As I walked away I thought to myself,
Oh well, I guess sometimes the authorities either make a mistake, or do the right thing – their only either humans or talking olives after all. Nothing in this universe is totally knowable – it’s written into the ‘uncertainty principle’ equations. I’ll just have to wait for the history book to be written – they’ll probably call it “Of Olives & Men” no doubt.
As I walked home I felt something in my tee shirt pocket. It was either a few of bland uneaten deli olives in a shitty plastic deli bag, or it could have been those oversize ‘all natural’ anti anxiety meds I’d misplaced earlier in the week. Given all the drama, I decided I didn’t want either of them. It was all too risky. Sometimes in life you gotta just trust your gut. . . or do you?
The End
Anton Martin Smith Writer 