mostly apples
fall to the ground
corvids fly overhead
sharp-eyed rangers
raving rogues,
conscious and strong
with depth to their wit
mostly apples
plucked from trees
incessantly
with bitter heaves
to hold together
a connection to the earth,
the real —
the physical,
the tangible —
rather than the abstract
a life spent in hallowed halls
celebrating the mind —
all its accomplishments
and nothing else —
is a life gone rotten,
gone wrong,
and left to be mired in filth
mostly apples are what we have now,
lies, lies
and clever cries
always reaching for truth
and never finding it
only this, only here
only apples —
yes, mostly apples
Garbage Notes:
Anyone who has devoted a substantial part of their life to academics will understand this poem. The apples represent knowledge—anything mental really. Anything that requires you to live inside your own head for large parts of your day.
As a former academic, I saw first-hand how disconnected a person could feel from real life, from people, from nature, from anything biological. In the pursuit of ideas and novel concepts, it can be easy to forget that reality is still out there. Life isn’t some virtual or platonic space full of concepts and abstract constructions.
Now, as a writer, I still deal in the mental—however, I’ve traded in p-values and yearly symposia for imaginary characters and frequent rejection letters. But I realize that at times I can be just as prone to the alienation of a walled-off existence.
Looking back on this piece, the corvid imagery stands out—what do they represent? I suppose they represent a sort of intellectual ideal—an animal that embodies freedom and intelligence. Sharp-eyed and clever, flying above everything else, seemingly omniscient, strong and fast. These are the traits I worshipped in others and strived to achieve for myself.
But the truth is, intelligence and knowledge isn’t everything. It’s only one aspect of life. To paraphrase David Foster Wallace’s This is Water— if you worship your own intellect too fervently, you’ll find yourself feeling stupid and afraid. Afraid that other people will figure you out or get that cognitive step on you. And that’s not the kind of life you want to live.
We have to embrace the physical as well—nature, each other’s bodies. We should spend time appreciating new people and places. We should love our animals and treat the planet with respect. Echoing D.H. Lawrence, we should preserve that organic connection. Between body and mind. Between fruit and tree. Don’t become a plucked apple.
Franco Amati 2023
“Once you start the mental life, you pluck the apple. You’ve severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connection. And if you’ve got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple…you’ve fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it’s a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.” -D.H. Lawrence
My Mom used the expression, “apples don’t fall far from trees,” and not academically. She intended stay away from whomever because that shiny red apple fell from a poisoned tree.
Curiosity is what keeps us going. Crows are naturally curious and bold. I think that is one of the reasons they are as smart as they are. In academia or really anything in life, once you lose curiosity, things go downhill quickly. Want to keep your love alive? Stay curious about your partner. Want to do art but feel stuck in a rut? Get curious. Want to expand your life and yourself? Get curious and stay curious. Academia, science, history, etc. all become full of bad apples because their motivation was for something other than true discovery. Loved the imagery in this poem, by the way.