The Last Apple On The Tree

I am in the middle of reading Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness. According to Honore, we are all victim to a prevalent time-sickness. He writes,

"Why, amid so much material wealth, is time-poverty so endemic? Much of the blame rests with our own mortality...we still live under the shadow of the biggest deadline of all: death. No wonder we feel that time is short and strive to make every moment count...

Time-sickness can also be a symptom of a deeper, existential malaise. Kundera things that speed helps us block out the horror and barrenness of the modern world...

Others think speed is an escape not from life but from death. Mark Kingwell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, has written...'Despite what people think, the discussion about speed is never really about the current state of technology. It goes much deeper than that, it goes back to the human desire for transcendence...It's hard to think about the fact that we're going to die; it's unpleasant, so we constantly seek ways to distract ourselves from the awareness of our own mortality.' "

He goes on to discuss various ways of incorporating slowness into our modern lives...Slow Food, Slow Cities, etc. Much of what I have read thus far is essentially my justifications for moving to Marquette put down on paper. So what about that lone apple, eh? I'm getting there...have patience.

Anne Rice is famous for her vampire novels. I attempted Interview With A Vampire a couple of times over the years and always gave up, but I am determined to give it one more try. She was very much involved in the movie production, and there is a point made in the movie about the lives of vampires that she must elaborate on in the books. As the vampires age chronologically, society--the world--moves on to a point at which the vampire is no longer able to cope. The character of Louis is important to the others because he can help them adjust to the new ages. Without his help they will fade and give up eventually, their anachronistic lives to much out of sync with the modernity they are facing.

I thought of all of this over the past couple of weeks. As I drive to and from my home I pass a number of apple trees along the way to the highway. The leaves have gradually traded their greens for yellows and oranges and then for browns before mostly flying away leaving a few stragglers and some stouthearted apples behind on the branches.

There they hang deliciously red amongst the barren branches, garnished with a few clusters of brown, crumpled leaves...waiting, ...waiting,...waiting for the fall to the ground.

My uncle's mother will turn 100 next month. She has outlived all of her lady friends. She too is waiting. My neighbor's step-father passed away this week at 98. He had fought and refused nursing home placement, leaving most of his care on the shoulders of his younger wife, Heidi's mother. I commented on how this will relieve her mother of that burden and Heidi agreed, but commented how determined he had been to make it to 100.

Why do we rush through our lives? Why are we so fearful of death? Who really wants to be that last apple on the tree? A vampire hiding away in a mausoleum completely out of sync with the world around you.

It wasn't my intention to write a bleak post about death, but rather to use this image of the last apple as a means of reevaluating how we choose to live our lives. The snows of winter wait for all of us. The fable of the ant and the grasshopper has it wrong. Enjoy life as it happens. Each day is a blessing no matter how it is spent so long as it is appreciated. There is no reward for counting up all the things that will never be done, all the places never visited. That is simply mental hoarding of pointless dreams.

Billy Dean sang about it many years ago..."Gonna hold who needs holdin', gonna mend what needs mendin', walk what needs walkin' though it means an extra mile, pray what needs prayin', say what needs sayin', cause we're only here for a little while." Peace.