Tiger Balm Apples

While many actors have portrayed it, and people fear it in the woods, only he had actually in real life been pursued by a bear, and was the charter member of his club. School girls wore save the Turtles tee shirts. Only he, that he knew of, had stopped in the middle of traffic on a hot city street to rescue a turtle and carried it through the heat wave to the shade in the ferns by the water. The turtle pissed on him when he picked it up….turtles.

He walked as a stranger smelling of tiger balm and Kama Sutra oil. He didn’t shower much. He carried an empty coconut cup with a bent metal straw he had picked up somewhere on an island he couldn’t name. A singed leaf of sage sat nestled in his beard. It had flown up, as an ember the night before from his campfire and nestled deep within the curly mess of his beard shrub. It had burrowed a black little cave that left a mark amongst the auburn bramble. His body sashayed down the sidewalk, a tanned piece of shipping rope swinging in the ocean breeze. His eyes glowing just off the shore of the horizon.If the rain was coming down, he cleared his mind and could pass through the water without getting wet, it worked. It is a matter of presence without thought.

At night he slept in a hammock in a well-hidden campsite among the old growth in a local park. He kept his fire hours discreet and looked like any other left leaning well to do local when he strolled out of the park mid-morning. He had been there through season to season without worry.

He hadn’t watched television, or looked at one directly, for many years. He often walked the streets at night. He would see the light reflection on the walls and ceiling of the suburban houses. The frantic pace and meter of the light was torture and he would have to look away. Only to find the next window across the street reflecting the same mind-numbing pattern. It was worse and more uniform on Sunday nights.

His mind lived some six feet above his brain, it left him feeling watched and pestered. He had exceptional abilities when it came to self-reflection and an unnerving knack at guessing what might be around the corner. He was often bemused in hindsight.

He would visit the community center for snacks. It was built in the 1920, had well-worn and varnished oak floors and a fireplace more at home in Yosemite than than in a corner grange. He found some cookies, still fresh and enjoyed them with some cold whole milk cold and soft.

He was discussing apples with a city worker in the park one day. Line up four different types of apples together, clear your mind and start taking in, have a discussion, hear what the apples have to tell you. Did they come from high on a mountain hill, was it a drought year? Can you feel the hands of the migrant that picked it in the sun?

The annoyed worker took his rake and walked away. It isn’t just about apples. Apples are a great place to start. They aren’t going anywhere. It’s about expanding your mind and being open to receiving what the world is telling you whether it be fruit, a friend or enemy, a situation that may end one headed down the wrong path. I guess that is what we spend all this time building and learning how to listen, so that when the time comes we can hear clearly what the world is telling us, and act with purpose.

He liked to sit at the end of the dock and listen to the rumble of the expansion joints in the floating bridge stretching out across the water. At times he was just a shadow of himself on a cloudy day. He had lost track of time in his thoughts, his feet had slipped off the end of the dock into the lake. His boots were filled with water.