Nothing is fresh. There is no absolute freshness the way there is Absolute Zero. Like the idea of abstraction, freshness is continually relative. This is fresher than that.
That is not as fresh as this.
The flowers in the photo at the left don’t look so all-fired fresh to me. They look adequately fresh. And the signage that thunders “100% Fresh” at us doesn’t look too fresh itself. It is full of rents and striations and muzzy shadows—a text with a five o’clock shadow. A hungover text. A text that looks as if it’s been slept in.
And anyway the “100 % Fresh” text probably didn’t originate as a proclamation about the rather hangdog flowers next to it. It was more than likely juxtaposed into its new, uneasy position a defender of bouquets-in-decline (the bright yellow lilies are crisping around the edges, and the tight red flowers are falling slowly back to earth, like spluttering flares).
It’s an odd idea anyhow, this “100% fresh” business. Things decline at different rates, do they not? They set their own paces for that journey down the road to perdition. Maybe the lily stems are fresher than the likely petals. Freshness comes and goes, waxes and wanes like the moon. Sometimes freshness depends on a time of day or an angle of vision or the mood of the observer. This morning, for example, as I write this, I’m convinced that my left leg is less fresh than my right leg. My right hand—which carries my typing fingers—feels fresher than anything else about me.
[Note: Some serious dislocation in the realm of authenticity occurred when Tim Hortons started to freeze all their baked goods but opted to stay with the slogan, “Always Fresh,” even though what they offer now is “Always Frozen”. Nobody seems to care]
