The Apple.

Mar 24, 2008 - 13:13 PM PST

Have you ever had one of those days? The days when you feel fat, old, useless, alone, unwanted and claustrophobic all at the same time? T.S. Eliot is staring you in the face and suddenly you understand "The Wasteland" like you never imagined you would ever understand that piece. Seems like whenever you're unoccupied this is how you feel. "Idle hands" and all that, you guess. Whenever you're not working, or don't have a demanding project and since you're not in school anymore you feel like this all the time. The novelty of being able to do nothing but rest wears off and suddenly you find yourself trapped in the Doldrums unable to get a hold of Tock; he keeps rushing past you and getting away from you.
So what do you do to counter these insipid and annoying bouts of ennui (lethargy? boredom?)? Sometimes you cook; sometimes you read; sometimes you write; sometimes you play music on your guitar or violin; sometimes you watch television on the internet - when it's working, anyway; sometimes you take walks.
The walks tend to be the coolest. You end up seeing things that surprise you. Sometimes it’s something sad, sometimes its something happy, but every time it's something surprising. It's an acquaintance in the grocery store. It's finding "The Bell Jar" at the book store. It's a hubcap on the side of the road. It's an almost car accident. Its kids running home from the bus. It's your mailman on the opposite side of town. It's a sweet used guitar at the music store. It's a rose etched into the new sidewalk. It's the nice man with special needs at the library.
One day, it's an apple.
It's been a pretty wretched day for you. You're grumpy, cranky, generally irritable. You've felt stuck for days. You want nothing more than to hop a plane to anywhere and get lost. It feels like it would be infinitely better than slumming in the familiar. You decide that despite the cold and the forecast of snow, the only thing you can possibly do before you break down and write angry hurtful words about people you like on public blogs or watch yet another episode of Gilmore Girls on DVD, you must get the hell out of Dodge. Or, in this case, your parents' house.
You bundle up, long sleeve shirt, another long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, LL Bean vest that actually belongs to your father, thick socks, hiking boots. You throw a book, notebook, digital camera, pen and cd player with current favorite cd into a messenger back, grab your cell phone and your keys, leave a note so the next person home knows how to get a hold of you and you head out into the cold, wintry grey Boston suburb.
You walk up the street, then turn down the hill. So far everything is peaceful. There are a few cars, possibly a bus bringing children home from their daily incarceration. You attended the city's public schools; you know what these kids are returning from. You'd wave, but you are far too sullen and cynical to show your solidarity. The street heads up one of the Seven Hills (yah, kinda like Rome). Spoon Hill looms before you and you straighten your back and climb the hill, a hike made easier by the sidewalk. A few more cars pass you by, a dog or two barks from the doors of the nearly identical houses.
At the end of the street you are also at the top of the hill. You turn to the next street which ends abruptly at a busy road. This road is hardly a main road, there are however, three apartment complexes, an elementary school, a pizza place, a beach and the entrance to a grocery store on this road; it also connects to Rt. 20. You think about how wherever you've lived in the United States has had Rt. 20 running through the center of it. Unlike the Massachusetts drag you call home, the New York drag did not house seven Dunkin Donuts'. In New York State you called it Albany St. In Massachusetts you call it Boston Post Rd. East, East Main, Granger Boulevard, West Main and Boston Post Rd. West. The fact that it is all actually the same road seems bizarre and disjointed.
You continue down Spoon Hill toward Rt. 20 (or East Main St.) still grousing. You tried crying about things as you walked along, but as you tried to force the tears to come (crying releases stress, after all) you realize that you don't actually have anything to cry about. It's not like you're sick and dying, or recently had your heart broken or were pining after anyone or anything equally lame. You weren't suddenly struck with the reality of death or abuse or pain and suffering. You yourself have nothing to be upset about. Being bored does not elicit tears.
Well, what the fuck, then? you ask yourself. You are bored to the point of frustration and now you're thinking there's nothing you can freakin do about it. You've tried the usual tactics, but there's nothing, no release. There's little stimulating your mind and now you're on a walk, taking pictures of sad things (broken ice in the reservoir, empty winter beaches, places you used to play as a kid) but you are none the wiser. Christmas, the New Year and your birthday are approaching faster than you realize and you are none the wiser for your age and experience. You might as well be back in college stressed out over essays and assigned readings you didn't read. At least then you were occupied.
You start questioning the real good, the real use, of that bachelor's degree as you walk along the blustery streets of your childhood. You think about how little time you've spent as an adult in this city where you spent the better part of eighteen years. Most of your time as an adult has been spent in New York and on the Cape, minus the foray into European life during that semester in England. You wish you were back there. Twenty years old, slim to zero responsibility, not getting carded at pubs and clubs because while you still look eighteen, in Europe that's the drinking age. You wish you were back at college, taking classes, learning new things, discussing literature and art with friends and professors, acting in plays and attending productions at other colleges and universities in the area. Your dissatisfaction with the current state of your life continues until you reach Royal Crest.
Royal Crest Estates is one of the apartment complexes built in the mid-1970s, you think. They were definitely there when your parents moved to town in '77. The demographic seems to have changed. In keeping with the rest of town and based on what you've noticed, less lower middle class white families and more low to lower middle class Brazilian families are living there now. They're not exactly impressive apartments, but they're still 1000 bucks a month. Rent in eastern Massachusetts tends to disgust you. A year earlier, when you thought you were going to grad school in Boston and you're best friend from college thought so too, the two of you were looking into apartments in the area. The most the two of you legitimately could afford would be a third floor apartment in a house in Union Sq. You'd've had to take the T in every day for classes, and as well as get a job and study. Part of you is very happy you didn't get into the program.
But now you are passing Royal Crest, somewhat less despondent than when you began your walk. But still upset. Then you see it sitting there: the most interesting thing you've seen in a long, long time.
It's an apple.
You wonder how it got there, this poor, lone apple. Did someone who'd been shopping drop it when they were carrying it home? you wonder. You're not far from the grocery store, after all. You’ve always liked apples. As a kid, apples were your favorite fruit. It was pretty much the only fruit you would eat. Maybe bananas. Possibly blueberries. Definitely apples. There was so much going for apples: apple pie, apple crisp, apples and cheese, apples and honey, apple of your eye, Adam’s apple, the magic apple from The Magician's Nephew, "An apple a day . . . ", "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree". You look up and realize, neither did this one. There's a brick wall around the Royal Crest property and just on the other side of it a little further up the way is an apple tree. There are three or four apples on the sidewalk by the wall, but none so far away as your apple.
You crouch down and take a good look at it. This apple kind of reminds you of you. Alone, stranded, no longer attached to its life source, but still not all that far from it. It's sitting out on the cold sidewalk being passed by hundreds of people everyday who do not see it, its beauty or its significance. But you see this apple. Its type is difficult to determine. It's red. It's a little soft, but you don't know if that is from age and hitting the sidewalk and rolling or from nature. It's not a Fuji or a Gala or Red Delicious. It could be a McIntosh. Your neighborhood which backs the Royal Crest Estates was once an apple orchard. There are still a number of left over apple trees like this one throughout the area.
The forlorn little fruit has caught your interest and your imagination. Its loneliness calls out to your own and you suddenly feel an affinity with this apple. The juxtaposition of something so alive and healthy and the cold city street and the steel and gasoline of the vehicles is interestingly symbolic and you admire the audacity of just such a set up. It’s good, in a way that could never be orchestrated by a human hand.
You pull out your camera not wanting to miss a chance to capture this moment in time. This apple, that was before only an apple, is suddenly filled with great meaning and symbolism, not just worms and bacteria. But without some representation (namely: a photo) there is no real way to duplicate the moment. You could tell people, but there would be something lost in the telling; you could draw it, but you've never been all that good at drawing realistically; best to take a picture and share it with others. The apple may be ponderous to them the way it had been to you. It could evoke interesting discussion. It could be the basis of an existential exploration. It could make someone laugh. It could make someone think; but only if you take the picture.
You press the button and take the picture. You admire it on the screen on the back of the camera. You take a few more, different angles, portrait, landscape. You like the portrait photo the best, the one that shows the cars and the length of the street and the snow all along the edge of the pavement. The perspective exaggerates the distance.
There's an abandoned shopping carriage from Price Chopper further up the sidewalk. In England, you remember, you had to deposit one pound in order to access a carriage at the grocery store that was really an Asda which is really Wal*Mart. Then, if you tried to take it past a certain point, similar concept as a dog's shock collar, the carriage would stop working and be too difficult to try and steal. Apparently we haven't caught onto that idea in America.
We haven't caught onto a lot of things. Especially here, you think. You think about your town. What a hole! You had a conversation with your best friend recently about how the area you guys grew up in is culturally useless. There's no art, there's no real theatre, the only independent bookstore is Annie's Book Swap and the only sorry excuses for independent coffee shops are a handful of diners. Someone has got it in her head to turn an old factory into artists’ lofts with workspaces. What a laugh. You're forty minutes outside Boston, at least an hour from Providence and at least an hour from Hartford. And you have zero real art in this town. When you were a kid you used to dream about going to Paris or London or New York City and becoming a painter or an actress, living in a garret apartment and writing on an old, decrepit typewriter at the gable window. You wanted to live for your art and you knew it would never happen here, in suburban hell.
Perhaps this apple was just like you. Perhaps it too wanted to be something it couldn't be, not there on the tree, not with the other apples. Perhaps it wanted "to be a big cactus with a pink flower on it." Perhaps it simply wanted to make the cold grey winter a little more interesting. So it jumped from its branch and rolled its little old self on over away from the others and righted itself and said "This is where I'm going to be. And here I will wait until someone comes along and appreciates my effort." Performance Art at its most real and most needed.
You consider this apple. You spend time thinking about it. You justify its existence. Then you post its picture online. You put it up next to pictures of a sunset over Lake Cazenovia, a picture of Eilean Donan, a memorial in Boston, Lost Lake, yourself, a particularly funny sign, the harbor at Portree, a painting you did your senior year in college and your friends at Lewis Bay last fall. You release this apple into the world much like Eris when she didn't get invited to the wedding, but with very different intentions and, hopefully, very different consequences.
Weeks later you still find yourself thinking about this apple and what it could possibly mean to you. You suddenly realize how Wordsworth must have felt after he saw those damned daffodils. Not your favorite poem despite the fact that it defines the Romantic Movement in English language literature, but not the worst. You desperately hope you never write a piece where you allemande with the apple. You are fine with discussing how the apple reflected exactly how you felt on that walk that winter afternoon - something a little less Shelley, a little more Sexton (minus the whole car-in-the-garage thing).
But you don't for a while, write the piece. Not until someone asks you: what's with the apple? Someone else in the world wishes to know the story of the apple. Perhaps they don't want to know your life story. Don't want to hear the woes of the currently unemployed and bored: (quite frankly, how dare you complain about having the luxury of not working!) But they want to know about the apple. They've asked you. So you're thinking about it, once again.
What is the story of that apple? How did it get there? What kind is it? What's its significance? Well, quite frankly, all of that lies in you, in your own story. The story of the apple is the story of what prompted you to take the picture in the first place. How you came to be walking along that road the day before a snowstorm. So you tell that story. Somewhat abstractly, to be sure, with a number of alterations and some exaggerations and a whole lot of insight that came to you the way it came to Coleridge and Byron.
That apple, it appears, was just what you needed. It got your mind off Eliot and onto the Romantics, onto the Confessional Poets, onto Dali and Borges, Murakami and Ian McEwan. You’re writing again. You’re writing well, you’re writing good things with significance and creativity. You’ve been at it most of the day. Philip Pullman once said he writes 1000 words a day before he gives it a rest. You have over 2000.
Suddenly you feel like an apple. There are some in the bowl on the kitchen counter. They're red and green, probably Fuji and Granny Smith. It's not quite a bag of rolls from the bakery truck on Canal St. at dawn, but it's good enough.
You hope McInerney would be proud of you.


R. Pilling