Yes, a Tomato Can Be a Suspension Bridge

Photo by Davor Denkovski

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.” ― Neil Gaiman

There are a lot of things that we think we know in this life.

Absolute truths that apply across the areas of our expertise.

Immutable facts that we apply to our writing and concepts, because they just are.

Perhaps you’ve heard this commentary before, or something similar: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.”

It’s a good heuristic. Applying our experience and expertise to the facts we know. Of course a fruit salad can’t include tomato; even if it is biologically a fruit, we all know it to be a vegetable. It doesn’t go in fruit salads.

Or does it …

Yes, that is a small tomato in a fruit salad.

Please find the fruit salad I was given at the departure gate from Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali. I sadly don’t remember where I was flying (Thailand? Oriental Mindoro? Back to the States?)