Conversations With A Grape

Love your grape and it will love you back.

Conversations With A Grape

Not too long ago as memory serves me, thoughts merged from the future to the past as if they were already from there own places in time, moving in opposite directions and going nowhere special. The here and now, so vivid on the mind seems superfluous in the flux of time, so as to become something else not definable, while walking in the ancient land thinking about dry soil or nothing, as ideas pass by in a smile of reason as is their style.

There is the matter of the crops not growing in their usual manner. Harvest is already at hand and it is only early July. The vines hang limp with little product, dead on the vines are their babies, tiny dried grapes, as dead as Jesus hanging on the cross as we walk row after row, isle after isle through the parched soil of carnage. Wine is not supposed to taste like vinegar. This is the 3^rd. season in a row where the grapes gave up the ghost.

What am I doing in this land? I don’t even speak the language. All I can say is Parles-tu Anglais; begging them to speak to me in my American tongue. I say “Quelle heure est-il s’il vous plaît” Why do I bother asking them about what time it is? It is always the wrong time. French has never been a second language for me. It isn’t a third or fourth either.

Things are not improving. I can go weeks without seeing a fellow human being. I only have the immature grapes and dead vines to keep me company.

There is one purple grape in the orchard that caught my eye a few weeks ago. It seemed to have a glow, a sparkle of knowledge, an oval quality second to none. I was cautious not to let on. It appeared to have some weight to it, some life, some potential. It reminds me of Sade. You know; the soft jazz singer. The Smooth Operator girl. People refer to her as grape with lips. That is not a very nice thing to say by the way.

Perhaps if she changed her hair from being slicked down and back around her skull she could fetch better compliments.

The grape in question, the one that caught my attention, has no name as I recall. It’s only claim to fame is clinging on a vine for dear life in this arid hostile environment. It is simple in its oval complexity, with what little water to be had and stored inside, which the purple skin can house proportionately within said boundaries of life. It is a fragile being in the business of miracles, of survival with literally no hands or feet to get about.

I was tempted and I’m still itching to take it from the fragility of the stem it comes from, which by the way, is already withered beyond repair.

I spend my waking ours thinking, dreaming of the uni-grape and its fate.

In point of fact I have lost sleep over the matter. I have become obsessed, enamored, enchanted by the oval wonder.

Just today I was deep in conversation with it. It confided in me with the strictest of confidence not to share what it had to say to me with anything or anyone on Earth. I gave my most sacred vow of confidentiality, which is to say, I intend on telling everyone. I have never been good with keeping secrets and I am about to prove it.

The grape told me everything on its purplish mind. (Its name will remain unsaid as I have limits to my already stained soul and tarnished integrity so I will not be dragged down to lower levels not suited to a man of my simple depravity inclinations. Discretion is still the better part of valor as you know and I don’t know the name of the little thing to begin with.) It wants to live on the moon. I asked it how it would get there and it simple said, “I’m going to roll and roll and keep on rolling.”

You have to respect and admire that kind of initiative and will power even if it is coming from a grape. I told it that Mars would be better. It would be a great if not grape achievement. Just think. It could be the first grape in space and clearly the only grape on Mars if it survives.

The grape brought up a good point. Mars could not be any more remote or dry as the place it occupies right now. Talk about a smart grape. This thing is a genius. Grapes need dry places and privacy. Mars has it all.

I finally got around to removing the delicate grape from the vine. I looked it dead in the face, which was difficult if not impossible. I kept moving it around in my hand, rotating it up and down and from pole to pole on its orbital axis only to discover it had no face. At least Sade has lips as a point of reference.

It would be a shame to think I was talking to the grape all this time with its back to me. I would hate to be rude to my one and only friend in the universe and I would not be surprised if it did not speak to me again. I do not even know if it is male or female. It does not matter. I would never ask. I respect an individuals right to privacy.

When we talk religion and politics the grape just listens. I never step on it in fear that it will let our a little wine. That would be horrible. The truth is, I never really heard it speak. I think it is because we are in a foreign country. I myself am just visiting here in France for a few years as an exchange student learning how to grow grapes. I suspect this is all equally foreign to the grape as well.

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Delightful reading Earl. Enjoyed over a morning cuppa. I love where your imagination went with this. Grapes on Mars what a thought. My mind also pondered on a houseplant I had which truly succumbed. Every leaf dropped off. But I left the remains in a pot in the greenhouse and nurtured it back to life. When everyone else thought I was nuts, they now congratulate me on my green fingers. A lovely little read.

Chris

[Earl Schumacker]

Good Morning Chris, Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. Congratulations on bringing things back to life. Some of my best memories in life are working in the garden. In the States we call it "having a green thumb." It is always a pleasure hearing from you. Earl

[Chris Shaw]

We are all fingers and thumbs ha ha.

Chris