Ralph Puglisi is an amateur writer just recently sticking his big toe into the literary waters of the publishing world.  He is currently attending school to obtain a degree in English.  Puglisi has been published in Verbicide, Weirdyear, and soon, in Sein Und Werden.

The Noble Ravaging (August 20, 2011. Issue 30.)

Once there was a woman who trained herself to peel fruit with her eyelashes. Alone, in the quiet hum of her home, she would work and practice at her craft during any free-time she could gather. Gathering time, as you know, is a difficult task in itself, but this woman had a rare sense of determination. Her physiology, in fact, was pre-ordained for it. As another fact, her middle name was Determination. However, as determined as she was, she got bored (not frustrated) after peeling a pear in a matter of a month, peeling a pineapple in a week, and then conquering a watermelon in a day.

Boredom is a tricky thing, it is, up against the matter of time and fulfilling our days—not unlike the thin line that separates hedonism and anarchy. As such, as a determined hedonist, the woman switched gears from sacred mystical feats, and seemingly impossible physiological endeavors, and ancient rituals of testing the potential of inhuman-inner-strength, to give up the art of peeling fruit using only her eyelashes. And so, she slept. She dreamed. She awoke—stirred—went back to sleep and then got up by using her own circadian design, to brush her shoulder-length, sultry-hued, jet-black-Asian eyelashes.

To the mirror she asked, "So what? Who Cares?"…In other words, she asked, 'what if?'

Pigeon-holed into switching gears of adventure, she chose to make a great, transitioning, hedonistic 'leap of faith' into de-centered thoughts of peeling people, instead of fruit. But, she hesitated (deep in the filament of her being) and wondered if she had exhausted her once-in-a-lifetime chance of filling the void of once-in-a-lifetime-chances at becoming the best version of herself or not. In fact, she was so determined not to think of her eyelash peeling craft as a waste of time, she immediately stripped every piece of fruit from every tree in her backyard, as if her time in the universe was truly important. She also believed that trees, plants, fruits and vegetables were sentient beings as well, and figured the upgrade to humans wasn't such a bad idea (not merely one for the birds)…And so, she gathered time to plan, plot, and purpose murder.

Murder is a tricky thing though, it is, up against the once-in-a-lifetime-chance-of-an-afterlife. This woman, of course (determined to take a faithful leap using her eyelash-peeling-prowess) knew that time stops for no one—(true, it does slow down for some and speeds up for others [and for others, stops on a dime, and then forces itself into retrograde fashion])—therefore, the only noble, existential choice was to move forward, or die trying, or even to try something 'significant', backwards…But who's to say murder is a retrograde event of humanity?

The woman did.

She decided she was determined not to carve and peel up another human merely for her own hedonistic, self-actualization exploits of discovery. Instead, she made the choice to hunt down an Oak tree in the nearby woods—kidnap it (him/her), torture it, peel its flesh, and sequentially bury it in an unknown unmarked compost heap…And she did, but rather, it was a Chinese Tallow tree, not an Oak.

After her menacing events of carving, scraping, splicing and peeling artistry, she thought about the potential for more, and thought, "so what" and "who cares" and "what if," and then the potential for 'more'—more power, more precision of her craft, and ultimately, her life—and what it all meant to be a woman with a skill in the modern world of determined matriarchal hedonism.

Now, you may ask, "so what" and "who cares"—but the de-centering question is: have you ever tried to attempt one thing impossible in all of your days, to become the best version of yourself…