What happens if the truth is never told.

This picture is a lie. Not exactly a lie when I told it; but it is a lie nevertheless. Tomatoes and citrus do not grow on my deck, regularly.

They did for a brief time, on a warm summer day.

The truth of this picture is its in-exactitude, its temporal status. A truth like this exacts all kinds of conclusions, leaves the watcher with a taste for a forever insistence. Here, on this spot, in this micro-climate, citrus and tomatoes have a tough time surviving, an impossible time fruiting, an adverse time leaving seeds and future happenings.

Here, they come to take their last breath.

I wonder how every four years we come to see pictures of a future painted for us with such certainty that we swallow hard, and make these pictures our whole truth. Yes, our whole truth. We forget to ask questions, to examine the rest of the evidence that is not laid out neatly in front of us.

If you lived anywhere on this latitude, with the wind factor similar, precipitation similar, you'd be skeptical about my picture. Your comments would ask for more details, more particulars.

We do keep the whole truth from our children because we want to spare them the harshness of life. We  tell them just enough to help them cope with what's in front of them, with the circumstances they can understand.  School experiences, job experiences, and life experiences will be teaching them plenty, we hope.

I wonder why we love fiction so much!
I wonder what it says about us.