crabapples on the tree

For two weeks he was distracted by the gradual progression of fall in the foliage just outside of the kitchen window.

The crabapple tree still had all of its crabapples, and he was quite sure that it shouldn't. Didn't they usually come midsummer? Didn't they usually ripen and fall before September?

But across the span of two weeks the leaves turned yellow and the redness of the apples was severe and tantalizing and it made him completely disinterested in doing the dishes that he was usually not-doing when he stood and watched out the window of his kitchen, ceramic plates in a neat pile submerged in lukewarm soapy water.

At the end of two weeks, he thought about the fact that all the crab apples were still there on the tree. They were gorgeously red. Almost burgundy. The leaves had all fallen and they were stark like kissable lips against the sky or the grass or the grey brown fence depending on how close he leaned toward the window.

He had not done the dishes once in these two weeks. Every day he had neatly organized the plates into piles, the cookware into groups, the silverware into a long red plastic cup and run the water and sloshed the bubbles and then stared. Utterly transfixed by the overripe, never falling crab apples. The others in the house must have been doing the dishes and they must have appreciated his preparatory work because no one had chided him yet. But it wouldn't have mattered if they did. Their scolding would seem so incredibly mundane (like the grass), profane (the grey brown fence), quotidian (the sky) against the color of the apples. They were that red.

What if they were some kind of signs? A beckoning portent of his own fate? A passage to Greater Truth? He knew he looked for too many signs, but:

what else could you look for in order to keep going? Certainly not the lukewarm dishwater.

And *fruit* on trees seemed an unneccessarily mythic temptation in any case, didn't it? The prosecuting believer and disbeliever bantered in his head on this point. He couldn't sort out which was which on this point.

What could possibly come of at least tasting the little fruit? He had heard them rumoured to be bitter, poisonous and too hard to chew, but two weeks of looking had eroded his confidence in this information.

What would happen if he partook? He couldn't shake the question even though no human lips had ever uttered it about his dilemma.

And he did also, yes, of course, understand, that such obsessions. Such persevoration. Such wanton desire --> might well, and fairly be described as a portal to mental instability. He might, just because he was asking the question, ignoring the dishes, weighing the absurd pros and cons --> be moving into the realm of the "mentally imbalanced."

His line of work gave him plenty of opportunity to work with the mentally ill. And frankly he thought that the lines between them and him were weak and tenuous. And maybe most important:

post hoc.

the mentally ill always became More So once they were labelled As Such.

And the nice thing about this fruit obsession was: that there were no obvious labellers. Even if, once he tasted the fruit he received some knowledge:

(yes, there was a god.)

(no, this world was not the place for him.)

(maybe: he would see Another Sign now that his eyes were *opened*.)

--> no one would be standing by to label his action as:

crazy.

so that unlike most of the mentally ill he knew, who became more so once they were labelled as such --> he would not neccessarily need to be thusly labelled. He would have a hundred new decisions that faced him (new knowledge or none: the later (none) confirming that the label (mentally ill / crazy / whatever), would-->indeed-->actually>>>be suitable for him...) if he found himself to be crazy or enlightened after the apples. He would still have many other choices to make before anyone would actually use the label on him.

And the label, by that time, may be a more comfortable fit for him. Or not. But he would have those choices later, because right now the only choice he could imagine was to:

drop the dishrag into the water, glance furtively back and forth at the front door and creep toward the tree....

He sucked in his breath, and his lungs felt cramped and too small for the possibilities of the air. He couldn't bring himself to drop the dishrag clenched in a wrung-dry ball in his hand. The bubbles in the water were gone. The color of the water was dingy and grey like the sink itself.

who ever thought of the name "choice" didn't understand what it was actually like to make one. choices were made for us, before we inherited appetites or saw the world for the first time and before we ever cared about anything in the world...