Things Organized Neatly

from Toni Morrisson’s The Bluest Eye:

“She liked, most of all, to arrange things. To line things up in rows - jars on shelves at canning, peach pits on the step, sticks, stone, leaves - and the members of her family let these arrangements be … whatever portable plurality she found, she organized into neat lines, according to their size, shape, or gradations of color. Just as she would never align a pine needle with the leaf of a cottonwood tree, she would never put the jars of tomatoes next to the green beans.” 

ed: I hated this book when I was in English class. The pine needle and leaf part reminds me of How to Wrap 5 Eggs.