The Apple That Changed Everything

Yeah I did it.

I ate The Apple.

Okay not The Apple, an apple. Specifically a brand of apple I've never liked since I was little.

Red Delicious. Yeah I know it's crazy, NOT LIKING RED DELICIOUS but liking apples. Yeah I don't get it either. Still I ate one today and I LIKED IT, A LOT.

I ate it down to the core. (Freudian slips - each time I've typed the word ate, it's come out as age - hmmmm.) Back to the apple. I've avoided Red Delicious applies since I was little. At one point in my life, I even went so far as to go to the farmers market and purchase one of all the apples they had in stock, to determine exactly which ones I liked. Except I skipped the Red and Golden Delicious because I was absoposilutely sure I didn't like that particular species of apple.

A food prejudice? Neurosis, maybe. I like diced tomato but not sliced tomato. I like grapes, dried grapes, err raisins and cooked grapes, grape leaves even but I don't like cooked raisins. I like crisp slightly tart, slightly sweet apples but I don't like Red Delicious. Only I did today.

So what was that about? Why was this Red Delicious apple different from the ones I age ate I don't even know how many years ago? Fresh picked, locally grown, kept cool, organic? What?!? What made this apple so enticing?

Turns out it was all of those things, except two. It was from Chile. It was not organic. I ate it to the core. Now that I think about it, if I could, I would go back and get the seeds because it would grow the same Red Delicious and delicious apple from those seeds. Yeah I'd have to wait a few years for the tree to fruit but I've waited this long to enjoy a Red Delicious, right?

Those thoughts actually led me to consider moving to Chile. It's a thought. That I'm seriously considering. I could at least living there during harvest season.

Then I remembered some biology and realized, those seeds from that delectable Red Delicious wouldn't actually produce an apple tree, with the same exact apples. Sigh.

Those apples grew under very specific conditions. A specific male spore, dusted a specific female flower, possibly through cross-pollination. The dust was carried through the air or left by a specific winged pollinating insect. It all happened precisely to produce that particular apple and no other apple was just like it. Similar, almost identical even, but not just like that one.

I am unable to duplicate those results. It's pointless trying. That singular experience cannot be reproduced. I'll enjoy. I enjoyed it. It's gone for now. I have no future expectations.

I'm just a being, who liked for a moment a unique Red Delicious apple.

Ahh experiences.

Heart Beats, Soul Stirs | Fiction

. . .FAME, I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly FAME. . .

The song echoed in her mind as she sat down in front of the camera, as he pushed the record button.

He asked her The Question, "So what are you thinking?"

She didn't know how to respond, so she fidgeted, got flustered.

He asked her another question, "Do you really want to do this?"

She shook her head and mumbled a weak, "yeah". The word had no staying power, no passion behind it. But she could still hear the theme song from FAME in her head. She knew this was right even if she was scared enough to shit her pants.

She was also hearing something else below the FAME theme song. She was hearing her heart beat, her soul stir. "Yeah", she said, louder, stronger, more assured, "I really want to do this."

"You really want to know what I'm thinking? REALLY? I'm thinking you're an ass and no I'm not having your baby. I've already scheduled the appointment for an abortion. Oh and thanks for the Chlamydia. I gave it back to you right before I started my medication. The only thing you have left in the house is the camera recording this, as soon as you come out of shock, turn it off, pack it up and walk out the door."

She stood up, brushing past him and went into the bedroom, closing and locking the door. She knew he could kick it down if he really wanted. She hoped he didn't really want to.

She heard the soft, pouophh of the closing of the apartment door. Was he really gone? Did she dare step out of the room? Dammit she really hated wall to wall carpeting. Next week it was all getting ripped out, just like this child inside her tomorrow.

She had done it again, referred to it as a child. She wondered if she was getting cold feet. Wondered if maybe she really wanted to have a child, raise a child, love a child. Oh yeah they grow up. A child wasn't like the baby dolls she got when she was young. No, they grow up. You have to be responsible. You can't just leave them at your friends house. Plus they cry, a lot, all night sometimes. And if she kept it, HE would be around. He would be back and she never wanted to see him again.

After, waiting in the room for what seemed like hours, she slowly, carefully opened the bedroom door. She didn't see him, couldn't see him, all the lights were off. The glow from the full moon only partially illuminated the space. He could be hiding around any corner though, so she moved cautiously towards the light switch on the far wall.

Making it across the room and touching the cold plaster wall, she caught a reflection of the moon in the leaded glass vase to her right. It shimmered. She shivered and touched the switch.

The room was now bathed in soft flattering light when she noticed the DVD case on the console.

He left. He left her. She told him to leave and he left.

She thought about the door and ran towards it, to secure the slide bolt and engage the locks. The locksmith only changed one lock and hoped it was enough.

"Should I watch the DVD?", she questioned the empty apartment, padding towards the living room. "Yeah," she said again with conviction.

She grabbed the jewel case and located the remote. After pressing all the required buttons, she saw herself, heard her voice.

"God why didn't I put on any makeup? I look like a drug addict, dark circles under my eyes, sunken cheeks," she said to an empty room. No one answered. She was alone and the theme from FAME still echoed in her head along with her heartbeat.

Maybe, just maybe she'd finally hear her heart song.

Fiction

The curtain lifted as the pungent smell permeated the room. Close the window to cut off one thing or keep it open to clear out another. Something had to give.

Instead the foul stenches laced together and formed a noxious cocktail.

Mouth open head back, she swallowed it, in order to get on with her day. It was going to be a scorcher according to the much too loud tv weatherman.

Her plans didn't include getting angry or raising her voice. Modulated unconcern, enough to appear human, not enough to make her lose focus.

"Keep your thoughts on what has to be done today", she mumbled. It always felt forced, this half -assed attempt at affirmations.

"Every day in every way, I am getting better and better." She smiled and said to the mirror as the stench slid deeper into her nasal cavity.

Damn this. It's not going to work. None of this stuff ever works. Four years and it hasn't worked.

She shook the tooth brush vigorously, then jammed it into the pepto bismol pink protective cover and tossed it into the drawer. Noticing the rolled up, mostly empty tube of floride toothpaste, she thought about the CSI epidsode.

The only thought floating around now was if she had recorded the one where the woman committed suicide and framed her husband for it by eating multiple tubes of toothpaste.

Nah she laughed ruefully. It would have required planning ahead. Nothing ever goes as planned.

Words Control Us

Words control us. It is not until we* begin taking total responsibility for ourselves
and become our own authority that words will no longer be able to control us unconsciously.

Seriously, did I just use, 'we' and 'us' and 'ourselves'? Because who am I to tell you what 'our' responsibility is.

Words control me.

It was not until I began taking total responsibility for myself and become my own authority that words no longer will be able to control me unconsciously.

Becoming conscious to that is some damn hard work.

The lesson sank in more deeply after Havi's reply to a comment on her Friday Check-in #35 post. There is much that fed into the lesson, yet it was my almost immediate reaction two words in her comment that uncovered the statement made above.

Some of the thoughts I had after reading the post itself surrounded our desire to manipulate others with words.

Specific to me, I used words to manipulate those I want to like me, into liking me. Not really but I could create perceived likability by mirroring so it worked, in a superficial, parroting sort of way.

I had a need to be accepted, for my physical survival, so I manipulated the people I believed I needed to accept me and thus survive, but at such a great cost that I grieve now and again.

I manipulated myself for so long that I developed unconscious competence in manipulating myself.

It was just like my beating heart pumping the blood I don't consciously create through the veins and capillaries I don't pay any attention to.

Just before hitting the submit button on my comment to Havi, I considered the possibilities of what I had only just typed. I asked myself a question, Did I type that to impress?

See I have to ask myself questions like that. I've been a compulsive liar since I could talk. My first instance was around 30 months old, while trick or treating. I said, "frick or freat" and the person I said it to thought that was 'just adorable' and asked me to say it again. I did. I got more candy. Then my mom corrected me and I said it properly for her, until I got to the next house.

I saw the benefits in fibbing for fun and it got out of hand.

I am a natural born story teller, a weaver of emotions and voices using multiple skeins of variegated yarn. Over time and with much abuse by my own hands and the hands of others, this ability became twisted up inside me. The words controlled me and they required an outlet, manifesting in bigger, more grand lies.

My inner worlds and outer worlds contained no boundaries. I did whatever needed to be done to survive.

I had no idea how to use this power. My story about who I am became a compulsion to impress people, to make sure what ever I did created clapping and applause, liking and acceptance, survival of a now out of control ego or id. I never remember which is which. I just know one lacks control and the other forms in order to control the one lacking control.

It became so unconscious that upon opening my mouth, I never knew what would issue forth.

Words began to control me, keeping me ill at ease, yet displaying much verbosity.

Did I tell Jennifer this or that? Was I following the right yarn with Ben? I had to take my cues from them. I could no longer initiate a conversation because I didn't know to whom I had told what, exactly.

That led to some interesting situations and meeting some interesting people, but ultimately resulted in few true to the gill friends and much gnashing and ripping at my own esteem, abilities and talents and finally emotional stability.

Anyone using words could cut me down at the flick of a tongue. They didn't even have to be speaking to me. Talk about painful.

So when the two words - Wonderful and impressed showed up in Havi's reply to my comment, my heart sank.

I had to remind myself that I didn't reply to impress. I don't control how she is impressed. I don't control much of anything when it comes to another person and I don't want to.

I want to be aware of how words control me and I want to be aware of how I control my words.