Shipwrecks are Apropos of Nothing
Stephen Crane once wrote, “Shipwrecks are apropo for nothing.” After my, now infamous, pineapple incident I would replace the word shipwreck with pineapple. Pineapples are apropo for nothing. I don’t eat pineapples and the smell is really kind of sick to me. Yet, this fruit-which everyone I am around seems to like-seems to be everywhere i turn. I wrote down my pineapple incident because it is funny, and a person who read what i wrote came up to me later and asked, “Did that really happen to you?” Unfortunately, yes it did. But, the person who doubted this story, now fascinates me. This person who would ask me for the truth, yet seems confused himself as to what the truth is. The familiar brown that beckons him homeward and even inward, and the blue that dances around him giving him a self he has never seen before, seem to be warring and jarring his insides. Fear reeks before him, what should he do? Whom should he choose? What he once thought he wanted is now being questioned by this new and exotic spirit. Self. He chooses himself, but in this choice he realizes that even in his selfishness he cannot decide where he would be. The chant of being lifted high above the storm pounds his ears; the chance of discovering, the voyage into the unknown sits to his right. Yet, the chant itself is being pounded by his old brown, the warm brown that he has known and was so sure of. Chant, dance, sit, pray, prostrate. He looks up and before him is the cross-not the cross as he has known it: it is not a symbol of sacrifice from the immaculate conception, but dogma and creator. The Brown and the Blue both were created and bow to this cross and as he stares at the cross he sees not Christ or wood but colors. Brown beats and chants in his ears, Blue like ocean dances and stills, Red swirls as he tries to focus on cross.
Chant, Dance, Sit, Pray, Prostrate. Cry, Weep, Die, Mourn, Laugh. More people. More time. The smells of salt and carpet saturate him. Louder and louder yet far off and away. Jerk your head away, make it stop-Who are you-Too much-Too much-Cross-Sweat-Desire-Whom do you choose-Where will you go-Stomp-Stomp-
He looks up and he sees the Holy Mother. Fear not, says she, my son. His eyelids quiver and he wants to blashpheme her to her image. Why had she daughters? They are as pure as she, yet he cannot make out. Light stings his eyes and he is unknown, the chanting is faint, the dance is faint, and even our Mother is faint. Jerks his head. Tears sting his eyes and he knows. And then he hears a word, the queer word that began this all, “Pineapple.” He repeats it as his own chant, but when he sees Brown his mouth shuts at apple and all is “Pine.” He is Pine, not complete. Pine. Brown. Pine Brown. Pinebrown. He looks into the Blue and sees gold, brown, red. He sees the pineapple in her. Where is he?
“There once was a hero blue in a world of brown…”
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