The fruit in my kitchen looks nothing like a Cézanne. It’s different. Bruised a bit, with a couple of rogue produce stickers and a suspicious soft spot on the bottom lemon. My avocados are too ripe or hard as rocks, but the apples and bananas are delicious.

It’s just fruit.

Cézanne’s peaches are always stunning. To look at his work, one might think he was eternally blessed with expertly ripened fruit.

Or he was an artist, a storyteller, an enhancer of things who set his easel in front of whatever was piled on his favorite tablecloth and, instead of biting in for sustenance, brilliantly dabbed an image onto canvas. His paintings show how fruit might look if it wasn’t, well food.

Did Cézanne even like apples? I’m sure some biographer knows, but it doesn’t matter because gussied-up fruit made him famous.

Do you think anyone in Cézanne’s time mistook his fruit bowl for reality instead of staged? Were people scouring the land, searching for the perfect stem or the exact shade of coral? In doing so, did they curse their bounty, maybe toss out every piece that differed from a Cézanne painting?

Nah.

People were too busy eating back then, and he was probably just some painter.

My thoughts from the laundry room. Favorite Sheets.

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