The Fall Had Its Price . . .

Apple Juice

(Image from Bar Code Revolution)

I stumbled across this form of artistic license just this morning by way of LinkedIn, which indirectly linked me to an article from two years ago by Cliff Kuang for Fast Company titled "In Japan, Even the Barcodes Are Well Designed" (November 9, 2009), which in turn linked to a gallery of aesthetically rendered barcode images, from which I've borrowed the 'apple' above.

As we see, Eve ought to have checked the price before she plucked that cherry-red, virginal 'apple', for as Milton shows in a subtle bait-and-switch, the price is too high for an ambiguous fruit becoming a fuzzy peach that "downy smiled" -- or, as I re-imagine, turning to the more acrid juice of Apfesinensaft through that original apple's sin-sap.

Although . . . we might recall a poem that I wrote nearly three years ago in which that bite into the apple results mostly in a sour wine:

Paradise Gainsaid

There is a garden in thy grace
Where trees of lively knowledge grow,
An earthy paradise to face
The harvest fruits of all our woe.
Here apples ferment, by and by,
Till tears of Apfelwein we cry,

If cry we must, when eyes disclose
That occidental sun aglow
Decline toward that which never shows
Its face though faced with that flambeaux.
Yet face it must we, by the bye,
Till tears of Apfelwein we cry.

Yet in this earthy garden still,
How statue-like I see thee stand
To counter time that comes to kill
All thou attempt with eye or hand,
From sacred apples' last good-bye
Till tears of Apfelwein we cry.

You thus see how things never turn out quite as they seem, for "Þe forme to þe fynisment foldez ful selden -- or as I once punned in a similar vein, "Wir bringen alles zusammen . . . um," which sounds initially as though it would mean "We bring everything together" but ends up meaning "We kill everything together."

Thus we find bitter truth in the reminder that "The beginning and the end accord hardly ever . . ."