Creative Sample: Fig Essay
Sweet Reminiscence
It is so hard to find fresh fruit these days. Everything, it seems, is from some South American country or another tropical one three-thousand miles away.
It is not infrequent that I find myself in the scenario I am in, walking into the produce department of a supermarket only to find overpriced fruits and berries. However, this time I pick one up, a fig from God knows where; it lies in my hand, softer and more malleable it feels than clay. It has a familiar texture, one I have known in the past, one that makes my eyes heavy until I must close them. And only when I do does the light appear. For that fleeting moment, with closed eyes, barely distinguishable in the haze of confusion, what is it that I see? A tree? No, maybe a park or a courtyard. I open my eyes and it is gone. What did I see in my spell of drowsiness, my blink of a sleep?
I desperately try to remember; try to visualize the tree, or the park, or the courtyard, or whatever it could have been. In my frantic state I force the images into my mind’s eye. And then I lose the tree. I become even more panicked and force my mind to walk down the park and into the courtyard… and then those too are lost. Then I am left with the whatevers, the remnants of a dream scattered in my consciousness like glass among sand. I awake in the middle of the produce department still holding the fig, not from a sleep or daydream but as an escape out of the interior of my mind. A place that I had been before but that I cannot imagine having been to at the same time.
I regain my composure, buy the fruit and bring it home, wondering on the way what mysteries its interior holds for me. As soon as I lay it down on the counter, I pick it up. I press it firm against my upper lip and breathe in through my nose. That odor, the faint aroma of the battle between earth and plastic. I am knocked back, awoken and put to sleep again by the little fruit. The flashes of light return. I see it now! It is a tree! A fig tree nonetheless! Suddenly, I am brought back to reality again. I selfishly try to bring back the light and I smell the fruit again. But forgetfulness prevails once more and I am left sniffing a fruit in my kitchen.
I quickly put it down, more from disappointment than embarrassment and I look around to realize I am again alone with this source of great mystery and distress. I must decipher the secrets that lay under its thin skin. “What is in there,” I hear myself whisper. I cannot contain myself. I unravel the fruit, I see myself in a reflection off of the window and I realize that I am the predator ready to pounce on a victim I have been stalking for what seems like a lifetime. I grab part of the fig, raise it to and place it in my mouth and am blinded by the images I see, the intensity of the light. It is the fig tree in the courtyard near the park I passed by everyday and just as frequently ate fruits from for the first five years of my life. I walk past the general store and through the park, up to the tree in the courtyard and take a fig off the tree, like I had done countless times before. I taste it and spit it out, thinking I must have inhaled raw sugar; but I have not, I have only tried a fig for the first time, or so it seems to me. The sweetness of sugar pales in comparison I think as I grab another and another. I am finally stopped in the middle of my picking fury by my mother who tells me- speaking in Albanian at the time but in English in my memory -to put the fruit down it’s going to give you a belly ache!
Then I am submerged into a pool of ice water, one in which I cannot see or breathe and I am back in America once more, in my kitchen with a half eaten fig in my hand. The taste in my mouth is dull and lifeless in comparison I think. I finish the fig regardless of the taste half-forcing myself to eat it, wanting to relive the experience once more. But the light does not come. I again look around, still in my kitchen, and see that I am the only Albanian thing here.
It is so hard to find fresh fruit these days. Everything, it seems, is from some South American country or another tropical one three-thousand miles away.
It is not infrequent that I find myself in the scenario I am in, walking into the produce department of a supermarket only to find overpriced fruits and berries. However, this time I pick one up, a fig from God knows where; it lies in my hand, softer and more malleable it feels than clay. It has a familiar texture, one I have known in the past, one that makes my eyes heavy until I must close them. And only when I do does the light appear. For that fleeting moment, with closed eyes, barely distinguishable in the haze of confusion, what is it that I see? A tree? No, maybe a park or a courtyard. I open my eyes and it is gone. What did I see in my spell of drowsiness, my blink of a sleep?
I desperately try to remember; try to visualize the tree, or the park, or the courtyard, or whatever it could have been. In my frantic state I force the images into my mind’s eye. And then I lose the tree. I become even more panicked and force my mind to walk down the park and into the courtyard… and then those too are lost. Then I am left with the whatevers, the remnants of a dream scattered in my consciousness like glass among sand. I awake in the middle of the produce department still holding the fig, not from a sleep or daydream but as an escape out of the interior of my mind. A place that I had been before but that I cannot imagine having been to at the same time.
I regain my composure, buy the fruit and bring it home, wondering on the way what mysteries its interior holds for me. As soon as I lay it down on the counter, I pick it up. I press it firm against my upper lip and breathe in through my nose. That odor, the faint aroma of the battle between earth and plastic. I am knocked back, awoken and put to sleep again by the little fruit. The flashes of light return. I see it now! It is a tree! A fig tree nonetheless! Suddenly, I am brought back to reality again. I selfishly try to bring back the light and I smell the fruit again. But forgetfulness prevails once more and I am left sniffing a fruit in my kitchen.
I quickly put it down, more from disappointment than embarrassment and I look around to realize I am again alone with this source of great mystery and distress. I must decipher the secrets that lay under its thin skin. “What is in there,” I hear myself whisper. I cannot contain myself. I unravel the fruit, I see myself in a reflection off of the window and I realize that I am the predator ready to pounce on a victim I have been stalking for what seems like a lifetime. I grab part of the fig, raise it to and place it in my mouth and am blinded by the images I see, the intensity of the light. It is the fig tree in the courtyard near the park I passed by everyday and just as frequently ate fruits from for the first five years of my life. I walk past the general store and through the park, up to the tree in the courtyard and take a fig off the tree, like I had done countless times before. I taste it and spit it out, thinking I must have inhaled raw sugar; but I have not, I have only tried a fig for the first time, or so it seems to me. The sweetness of sugar pales in comparison I think as I grab another and another. I am finally stopped in the middle of my picking fury by my mother who tells me- speaking in Albanian at the time but in English in my memory -to put the fruit down it’s going to give you a belly ache!
Then I am submerged into a pool of ice water, one in which I cannot see or breathe and I am back in America once more, in my kitchen with a half eaten fig in my hand. The taste in my mouth is dull and lifeless in comparison I think. I finish the fig regardless of the taste half-forcing myself to eat it, wanting to relive the experience once more. But the light does not come. I again look around, still in my kitchen, and see that I am the only Albanian thing here.
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