2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Capsicum
by Miranda Merklein
If you think about the chance we have at life, in our distinct manifestation
of what we pretend, or have faith in to be original at all costs,
that chance is very slim. Slimy, in fact, but if you are reading this, and I
if I really am the speaker in question, we both have been successful. Big
congrats to us both! Some of us evolve into relentless, unquestioning entrepreneurs.
Some, like me, are paradoxes. Consider the inconsolable
analogies:
Abandoned is to loved as ward is to state.
Huffer is to PhD as homeless is to hit-and run.
Sex goddess is to celibacy as psychosis is to medication.
Riptide is to death as survival is to hiccup.
And the list goes on like a GRE test gone mad!
Consider again the Capsicum as evidence. Once a spreading berry
plant along the forest floor, the evolutionary mind of the plant understood
that birds served as the best delivery of its seed and the surest hope
of propagation. The problem was that mammals voraciously devoured
the fruit, or “peppers” as Columbus would later rename them, planting
the word into our colonized consciousness. As science teaches us, mammals
ate the first peppers and grew stronger. You and I have eaten the
peppers! Destroyed the seeds in our digestive systems like any common
murderer. (Yes, even if you don't eat anything with eyes, you are still
guilty of species destruction.) Capsicum understood this immorality and
took arms. Thus the terms “hot peppers” or “chiles,” some so hot they
could not bear to be eaten, except by birds, who are not affected by the
added toxin. The problem for the chile pepper, however, was that as it
became hotter, so rose the tolerance of the mammals who ate its fruit.
In the end, the toxin proved not only largely ineffective, but addicting.
So it goes.
And this, my friend, is why I have changed my name to Capsicum.
Some people laugh. Some people take offense at my audacity. Many of
my friends, which will end up disappointing me no less, inevitably because
they will all die, call me Cap for short.
Santa Fe Literary Review 17