Antithesis (an-tith’-e-sis): Juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas (often, although not always, in parallel structure).
Either or. In out. You know what I’m talking about—all the opposites that send us on decision’s trajectory, and may be accented by all the in-between, which themselves maybe further divided. We live in a world of thought that is fissured and refissured, over and over.
The divisions create conflict, hierarchies, and coerced choosing. I see it every day at my fruit stand. “Oh dear, should I get the strawberries or blueberries?” I say “get both” and some customers do get both. But most go into a quandary and I end up telling them which one to choose. People with lots of money tend to buy one of everything—from apples to zoo fruit, which is a really weird fruit. Two bites and you become a honey bear—only in your head. Zoo Fruit is still legal, but not for long. People who are “on” the fruit can be seen trying to climb telephone poles and rummaging for figs in the grocery store, or surreptitiously eating a mango in the grocery store’s back storage area, making loud slurping sounds and bouncing up and down. If you know what’s going on, it shouldn’t be alarming, but if you’re not familiar with the Mango Dance it can be shocking. The police are routinely summoned and they have to explain what’s going on to the naive observer. This usually works out just fine. Yet, there is a group that want Zoo Fruit banned.
They claim the “Zoosters” make a mess and mate in the back rooms of grocery stores.These assertions are both lies. There has never been a recorded instance of either one. In fact, the opposition group was caught making a sexually explicit movie in a grocery store to pass off as zoosters mating. They were fined $3,000 and prohibited from the back rooms of grocery stores forever.
Still, the legalization of Zoo Fruit is in jeopardy. Mango growers are up in arms over the mango eating zoosters giving their product a bad name. We laugh at that!
Anyway, I have to help this customer make a choice between apples and oranges. She says she teaches logic at Martha Washington College. In her mind apples and oranges are an irreconcilable binary—like spam and pork roll—that can’t be mixed. Buying both would violate logic’s primary axiom and put her life into free fall. I recommended she consider the peaches. She picked an apple up and ran away, stepping in a large puddle, slipping, falling down and dropping the apple. People started laughing and she yelled, “Do you know who I am?” Somebody said “Nobody gives a shit lady, this is New York.” I picked up my apple and threw it at her. It hit her in the head. Then I said, “That’ll be a Buck-fifty Ma’m. Cash only. I’ll throw the orange in for free.”
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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