"Juice"

When I went to the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD), my classmates and I were welcomed and illuminated by the president of the college, Joseph Canzani.  "We will teach you to see what you've never seen before!"  My classmates got years of humor from his pompous and pretentious speech, but there was some truth to it.  If you really want to understand something, you've really got to look.

I know we've all seen the inside of a tomato.  Maybe you've studied it a little.  The act of reproducing what we see forces us to study it quite a bit more.  We think we know what it looks like, and what we think we know can overshadow what's really true.  We have to be willing to let go of what we think we know in order to truly learn what is.

For instance, I "knew" tomatoes are symmetrical.  They aren't.  They're approximately similar from side to side.  They have veins.  The seeds aren't mathematically perfect.  The inner jelly is an alien mix of red, brown, purple, and phosphorescent green.  I could go on.  Get to know your own tomatoes.  See what you've never seen before!

Once you've studied all of the wonders of tomato-ness, what then?  Do you share your new-found tomato awareness?  Don't get stuck on the tomato example.  Whether it's a tomato or listening to the other side of a political argument, have you truly looked at the issue, or are you just operating on your assumptions about it?

This week, I've been watching the Public Broadcast Service's (PBS) documentary on the Vietnam War.  I lived through these events when I was a child, and I've always been aware that the war greatly effects my world view.  I'm watching the series to get another look at those times.  In essence, to test my assumptions about the tomato.

The other night, I watched a Buddhist monk set himself on fire and burn to death.  Imagine what that was like when I was a small child.  I saw other children crying, old people crying, soldiers crying, houses burning, piles of bodies, stacks of coffins, mutilated POWs.

This Ken Burns series is excessively long in my opinion, but it's nothing like my childhood when tv was war all the time.  It wasn't like 9/11 when people acknowledged the PTSD generated by one day's footage.  People, especially kids, got counseling.  In my day, kids didn't have any real thoughts or feelings to worry about.  They'll grow out of it, and counseling is hippy dippy crap anyway.

There were some positive things that came out of all this televised violence.  I understood people of different races and places had feelings.  They bleed, they die.  Old white guys in government can be dead wrong, self-absorbed, and power hungry.  The war made me more empathetic and a committed pacifist.  In some ways, maybe it would be better if we still showed the sins of war on tv?  Maybe we'd stop the wars we're currently fighting and put that money into health care and education.

Watching the show is unpleasant for me, but I think there's a chance that it will let me see those times more clearly, to see as I've never seen before.  Though I have to admit, I'd rather study tomatoes.

"Yield"

It’s time to plant tomatoes. I saved seeds from my perfect little yellow pear-shaped gems last fall, and it’s time to start them again on the windowsill. This will be the second year I’ve managed success from tomato seeds, and I feel the joy of accomplishment. Hopefully they’ll be as sweet and plentiful as they were last year.

Cherry tomatoes make me think of Mr. Lutsch, who summer gardened on several acres next door when I was growing up. He was a horrible man, and I was glad he only lived there in the summers. My sister said he was from Transylvania, but I’m pretty sure he was an ex-SS German officer, or maybe Mengela’s evil twin – but he did grow very good tomatoes. He put baskets of his excess bounty on a small table flaking lead white paint by the road with a box for people to put money in in exchange for the produce. When the weather was still nice, I passed that flaking table every school day on the way to the bus stop.

I coveted the tomatoes. I burned inside for them. I think the main reasons I wanted them so badly is because they were verboten and because I hated the man so much. Before you think of me as simply a hateful child, you’ve got to realize that Lutsch was the type to get girls to climb trees so he could look up their skirts and tried to touch them when offering candy. Bad man. He deserved to get his tomatoes stolen, but I lacked courage to swipe them when he strategically placed that peeling table in view of his house across the street. My sister and I would discuss taking them, but it took Melanie to accomplish the deed.

I could write novels about Melanie. She was a colorful child, and let’s just say she had some anger issues she needed to work out. She lacked the normal sense of boundaries or a full understanding of cause and effect. It was probably a good thing that she was my sister’s best friend because otherwise she might’ve been mine, and then who knows how much trouble I would’ve found myself in. As it was, I was sometimes allowed on the periphery of Melanie’s exploits, and sometimes got tomatoes. Melanie was generous. We ran and laughed while German cuss words floated through the air behind us, and we ate stolen fruit at the bus stop.

Ironically, there wasn’t any need to steal tomatoes. We all had gardens with tomatoes in the back yards. We wanted Lutsch’s tomatoes. We wanted to make him hurt for looking up our skirts, or maybe for what he did at Auschwitz. I looked in the money box a couple of times. I was curious to see how much he was earning, but I never took his money. In my convoluted child thinking, I thought taking the money was wrong, but taking his yield was justice.

Lutsch and his codependent wife lived extraordinarily long lives, both living over 100. Maybe we helped by giving him extra exercise running after tomato thieves? I have to admit that I felt renewed irritation with him when the paper printed a celebratory article about the couple's 75th wedding anniversary. Melanie didn’t fare as well. She was killed by her husband a few years ago. She never did seem to get over her anger issues, or learn the value of cause and effect, but who would’ve thought that she’d be murdered?

This is a sad ending, but I like to think of those happy moments when Lutsch was yelling “Ach, ach, ach!!” (plus some words that I suspect were truly colorful in the German language) and the feeling of running effortlessly with Melanie when we were fresh-faced, laughing girls. I remember the best of Melanie when I eat cherry tomatoes, and my saved tomato seeds will ensure that my garden reminds me of her often this summer.