Contronyms

Isn't it ironic how 'date pit' has two different meanings? The hard little seed inside a date fruit OR A hole in the ground, filled with sweet juicy dates A nasty surprise, a date's pit is a sobering reminder to slow down. Whether in collaboration with - or in rebellion against - nature, this oblong obstacle forces us to reckon with the limitations of our body and the motivations of our appetite. On the other hand, a pit full of dates is serendipitous. A secret universe where living is eating and eating is easy. You probably didn't believe things could be this good, but they can. Critics of the pit call it "overindulgent" and "unsustainable". Perhaps they're right, but from my perspective - they're wrong. The duality of the date pit is true but not inevitable. It is cosmic opposites, conjoined and contrasted by the erratic whims of our vocabulary. One can easily imagine a language where the proto germanic root 'pithan-' and the latin 'puteus-'[1] didn't conspire to become the same word. Dutch[2] makes an uninspired distinction beteen ~pit~ (kernel, core, stone) and ~kuil~ (cavity, crater, ditch), begging no one to consider all the fun and flirty ways in which a germinating seed could be related to the loam hole where it's destined to lay sprout Personally, I love the date pit... unless Oh god I hope the date pit dates are pitted [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/pit [2] I don't speak Dutch, but I googled this