Monday, September 10, 2007

At Its Core: The Story of My Apple

Despite my initial thoughts regarding the fruitiness of this particular assignment, I found myself walking down a wet road with loose gravel in pursuit of an apple. Before I began my journey, I had many concerns and reservations about my future apple. How would I choose it? What do I want from it? How would I connect with my apple? What would we do? What would we talk about? We would have nothing in common, the apple and I. "I'm more of an orange guy," I thought to myself as I walked out of the night's darkness into the florescent light of my neighborhood Town & Country.

The bananas caught my eye, as are the nature of bananas. They, unlike apples, have a life energy about them. They bring to mind thoughts of tropic rituals full of delight and exotic beauty. Below the bananas was the basket of apples, only bringing to mind thoughts of the oddly textured mush served to me during my early school years. I glanced over the apples, feeling like a prison warden arbitrarily choosing an inmate for parole. But I decided to be more thoughtful, and I made an effort to size up each apple based on its appearance, as we have all done to each other many times in our lives. There was the older, veteran apple with the scars of a tough life in the fields. Next was the unfortunately deformed apple: the hump standing tall on its side as if calling out to be ridiculed. Then, of course, there was the star apple, shining with its youth, its perfectly symmetrical build obtainable only via surgical means. Finally, I saw my apple hiding behind its own mundanity. There was nothing that stood out about this apple. It had no story written on its skin. But surrounding it was an aura of potential like electricity around a Tesla Coil. With the right opportunities, the right tools, this apple could do anything. And so, I brought it home with me, occasionally playing catch with the sky on the way.

My apple may look empty at first glance. It could be just one of many, so it would have you believe. But it's biding its time. Growing. Learning. Every day it improves a little bit. And, if it wasn't for the short lifespan of an apple, it could one day be entirely unstoppable by man or earthworm. Its outer coloration is neither bright nor dull, but a mild blend of simplicity and red. It has as many faces as there would be degrees on a sphere, each one giving a sense of its many talents and personas. This is no stereotypical apple. In its apparent emptiness of features, it holds the presence of them all.