To the Orchard I haven't grown yet

5 July 2025

So I'm lying here in tears over Disney's Melody Time short: Johnny Appleseed. I'm not American, nor familiar with American folklore, so if you haven't seen it, it's about a run of the mill man who plants apples trees. With only his courage, a pot to cook out of and a humble bag of seeds, he traverses the land with dedication and simplicity - planting his trees wherever he goes. Over the many years, the fruits of his labour bring prosperity and unity in the form of a humble apple pie.

Something as small as steadily planting apple seeds over time, with fear-bounded courage, without the surety of success - in time - casts a shadow. The importance of that shadow is something I have sat upon. I really have begun to ignore what I once hoped to cast. Yet, if I could slip my shadow off entirely like a coat - unhook its threads - it would still be there. In a pile - on the floor next to, but not in my wardrobe - a familial reminder of my core. The spriteliness of me has faded, but it's a hope I cannot shake off. I submerge my dreams in distance, so the lip of me feels safe.

But the lip of me is lapping. In between the depths of distance, I'm choking on the blips and flips of the waters I created to soften the blow. As I look up, the apple tree orchards which cloud the sky have become clasped in the waves I so desperately tread to stay afloat. As the apple bobs, I have begun to sink.

Yet something so small, possibly as inconsequential as a pip, brings me back up momentarily to the surface. In these few gracious seconds, no longer shackled by the waters of distance, I am now drowned by fear. In this fleeting breath, a short bit with the sun, this is where I can see that my seed has promise. A seed is only as inconsequential as the means it has to grow. A seed I have not watered, but flooded with distance.

Yet what anchor to reality does this seed represent? Of my own fruition, what can I begin to grow? Have I sown any seeds at all? I have become so swept up with the dreams I have drowned in, that I have conveniently misplaced what my pursuit was, or even what I want it to be. In reality, I just don't want to face it. It is lost in a pile of rotting apples, and I am in the ocean.

To face the seed as a meagre seed. To turn it over in my hands. To plant it softly, in the cold, tumultuous earth. To spend a lifetime watering it, pruning it, coaxing it, without the assurance it will grow. To start at the beginning — without the security of success or ego — is what makes the sea of distance so alluring. Yet, the anchor I seek, is out on the shore. It's heavy, but glistens like the peel of a juicy plucked apple. The anchor that can drown me, is at the bottom of the ocean. A place where the sun can't reach. Where I cannot cast my shadow. A place where I cannot plant my seed.