The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Fruit lover.

All is well. Which is not to say that I am dismissing the things which made me angry in the first place. It only means that I'm past it now, that I've accepted the calm and intend to keep it. I am not sorry for what I was thinking before. No, those thoughts were appropriate for that moment. The moment, though, has burned away.

So, there are many apples in my kitchen: Idared, McIntosh, Red Delicious, Spartan and a few unwanted Northern Spy which are far too tart for me, but the wee one put them in the cart before I could stop her. The apples were big as softballs and gorgeous as they dangled seductively on their branches, and when I'd reach for one, several more would break free and fall to the grass below. Many were blighted by the excessive summer rain, but the deep jewel tones of the skins caught the eye and held it. I felt a little like I was meandering around Eden, except for the piles of deer droppings which M. insisted were rabbit, but I convinced him otherwise. Can you imagine the size of the rabbit that did that? Seriously, man-eating rabbits my friend. The lady who owns the orchard confirmed it was from the deer, that every evening and morning you can see at least twelve of them walking through the orchard, feasting on apples until the sun fills the sky. She also mentioned that some friends of hers actually shot a couple, and that it was 'the best meat they'd ever eaten! Must have been the apple diet!'. That part I didn't really need to hear.

We took loads of pictures. I think it would be criminal to ignore the ripeness of a day like this. We took pictures of the orange crusted roadways, the jubilant apples as they blushed in the cart, the wee one running amok through the orchard, carefully avoiding the greedy, drunken bees which were buzzing by the cratered fruit. My sore throat and M's headache went missing when we got lost in the trees. Both of us said how this day was a welcome distraction from the things in life which blacken our humour.

I bought a baguette and some spinach, and dinner will be a spinach salad with bread and the rest of the brazilian pumpkin and black bean soup. I will also add a cheese plate with sliced apples. Both of us are looking forward to it, though the wee one keeps turning up her nose when I mention the soup and salad. Not exactly kid food, but we don't really cater to that around here. Last Christmas she ate escargot with M. and my father, even going so far as to crunch on the shells. We've never been big on always making her the food she likes the best because she'd never eat anything else. I grew up hating fish and vegetables because my mother didn't care for it and when we did have it, she didn't press us to eat it. I've overcome my aversion to vegetables though (except peas and parsnips) but fish will never be something I will eat willingly. The smell is unclean to me, somehow. Though the look of them isn't that offputting, with tiny, prismatic scales and delicate, spiderweb fins, there is something about the taste of their meat, like thousands of dead years in each bite, that makes me cringe whenever I'm trying to swallow.

I thought about the poor deer which were dining on apples in the orchard and how they were gunned down by people who still think it's necessary to hunt. Maybe it is, but I think it would take an extreme hunger for me to even consider it. There is such gentility in a deer, such innocence that I can't fathom ending one's life and then taking it apart, much less eat it and savour the apple flavour. I'm not a supporter of hunting, even though I know that it's necessary with regard to population control and that some people just genuinely like the flavour of moose meat or rabbit. Apparently squirrels are even in danger of becoming dinner in some places. That, I don't get. I hate thinking about meat when I'm eating it. I don't think we humans care enough about animals on this planet, and those people who are of the ilk that hunt for their food because it's their right and so on are filled with a kind of coldness I will never understand. I could not look into the eyes of an animal and not see soul. We are the species that kills for the strange glory in it. They just want to eat their apples in peace. Last year, my parents were very upset when a 'local' shot and killed their favourite wolf as it walked along the frozen lake top. There was no reason to do it, just pure bloodlust. Wolves generally do not attack human beings, and any account of an attack on this continent is hard to find, but this person felt a need to kill it, even though it had a routine of running along the ice every sunset, and had been doing so for months. It never hurt a soul, and my parents and their friends had taken to looking for it every sundown just to watch the creature happily walk across the lake to the other side. It didn't make any sense to them that anyone would want to hurt it. It doesn't make sense to me either.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I could easily become one. Whatever protein I need I can get from beans, peanut butter or eggs. To savage the flesh of another living thing which had a personality, a life, a family, a pair of soulful eyes is cruel to me. Sure, some people might want to counter this with 'what if you were hungry? have you ever really been hungry?'. In that case, I might do it, but most of us aren't anymore, and we can get what we need from things that didn't breathe and romp innocently through the grass. Most of us would never consider eating our family dog or cat, but if you followed the logic of some people, you'd be within your rights to do so. A pig is smarter than a dog is, apparently, and yet we eat bacon. They feel. They think. Just because we are too ignorant to grasp that doesn't mean it isn't so. Somehow, we've decided that cannabilism is wrong, but eating animals is necessary. There are threads of hypocrisy in that. We're all just flesh, right?

I'm not joining PETA or anything, I'm not hard core. I just like animals. It's that simple.

I better never find out that apples have feelings. The horror. Oh, the horror.