this one’s about craving the bite
Last year I wrote about apples…growing apple trees, trading with neighbors. I got curious about Johnny Appleseed, and about different varieties.
This year, I’m thinking about apples again but in a different way. I’m thinking about that apple Eve bit into in the garden of Eden. More specifically, what drove her to do it. A woman blamed for the first sin, the one that invited sin, made us all sinners. What would life look like had Eve had obeyed, what would the stories be then? Would someone else have plucked the forbidden fruit? I don’t know. I do know that deep down something inside of me is craving to make a bold move.
Maybe I am looking for wisdom, waiting for the serpent to appear to encourage me. Or perhaps I don’t need a snake at all. How else could we know what things are on the other side if we do not take risks and question things we think we know. What is waiting for us on the other side of the bite.
After all, it’s just one simple bite. It’s not ascending a mountain or traversing the Serengeti. It’s not a hero’s journey, it’s not asking your boss for a raise, it’s not giving up sugar or crawling on your knees scrubbing away the wrong turns you’ve made. What is more in our nature than to seek nourishment, to reach for something ripe. To rebel. To question. To experiment. Eve may have been our very first scientist, a woman who wanted to know more. If we are all truly descendants of Eve, then I believe she has passed down that extra longing. A desire for more, a defiance against what we’ve been told.
Others would argue that Eve was a fool, easily tempted, and weak. I would argue she was radical; I want to be radical.
So, what do our “forbidden” apples look like. What are our bold moves to make in order to see what’s on the other side. Leave the job, cut the ties, be completely honest with yourself for once. Abandon bad habits, submit your poem, release your fear of change. Ask for help. Seek out your own knowledge and RUN with it. I come to you today in the form of the serpent and say take that bite. And I say it so daringly, and with sass. If you don’t see an apple, go into your life’s garden and open your eyes wider than they have ever been before. Eve only wound up living in sin like the rest of us, and someone else would have tasted it had it not been her. Shame isn’t new, we all live with it anyways so take the bite. Let someone else blame you for it, no one is innocent. Give something a taste you aren’t familiar with and see what happens. Break rules you have been taught and let the juice run down your arm. Maybe Eve just took one for the team and left in us the urge for taking risks.
If we re-learn the story about the tree of good and evil, I believe we can choose to live as our true selves, to question what we’ve been told. The apple I’m holding stands between me and what the universe might have in store for me, and today I’m feeling hungry.
As always please reach out, I do love to chat!
justicesarah67@yahoo.com
PS. Tell me about your apple, let’s fool around and find out together.
The Mint Patch Monologue 