You put your hands in
And rip their hearts out
Like a pomegranate
Insides out
– kate bush

Jewish tradition teaches that the pomegranate is a symbol of righteousness. This is because the pomegranate is said to have 613 seeds which corresponds with the 613 commandments of the Torah. That may be true about pomegranates grown in Isreal, but the ones here in the states are a tad diminutive, that is to say, “small”.

We had traveled and explored through a day and into the night to arrive at her family’s home in a moshav somewhere in southern Israel. A moshav is a cooperative community usually agricultural, where people own their homes and farms but purchase and sell cooperatively. A way of life a bit more autonomous than that of a kibbutz. Cooperative communities have never found much support here in the states. It seems the closest we can come are gated communities where what we share are walls, fences and security cameras.  (I’m sure there’s a bit of irony in there if only I’d take time to look for it.)

In the darkness of that night it was impossible to gauge the surroundings. One could only see the world within the confines of the automatic light which winked on and off as the motion senor detected our passing. Beyond the light the world existed only in the barks roaming dogs and the scent of an evening breeze. I could hear Jeff and Hadas laughing as they slipped around a corner.

After organizing our kit we settled ourselves on an open porch which was covered in palm fronds. In my mind I had an image of a tropical pool side bar that had been zapped into the Australian outback. A conversation carried on as Zohar brought out giant round red fruit in a big bowl. She sat on the edge of the porch and while holding the fruit in one hand, skillfully she moved the blade of a kitchen knife across the top of the fruit with the other. She scored the skin into a star pattern of cuts before putting the knife down and jamming her thumbs into the slices in the fruit. Her face suggested thoughts far removed from the independent task her hands continued to pursue. With a snap, she had pulled the fruit into halves. She placed one half of the pomegranate on the wooden floor beside her, then subdivided the other half once again.

From a small couch along the back wall I watched her work under the yellow porch light as Jeff and Hadas talked of the days travels and plans for the morning. Captivated by this almost ritualistic preparation of a fruit that I had never once regarded in my life, I picked up my bottle of beer from the wooden table in front of me and shifted myself down to the floor to take part.

Zorhar was now snapping bright red glassy seeds from the broken Styrofoam-like sections of the pomegranate. She would draw a large number of these crazy “Alice in Wonderland” corn kernels into the palm of her hand, then drop them into the large bowel in front of her. Occasionally a few would find their way into her mouth leaving a small red liquid glint across the curve of her lips. I picked up a quarter of the fruit and while following her motions, repeated each step. The fact that I had never seen, let alone pealed or ate of this fruit was something I kept to myself. I thought of how isolated we can become seeing the world only through the glass of our own windows.

As we continued to fill the bowl I took a few seeds and slipped them into my mouth and crushed them between my teeth. The taste was that of an old fashioned candy, the texture that of seeded grapes. As the juice slipped around my tongue crossing each flavor receptor from sweetness to salty, it reminded me of a wine made at a local vineyard back home, a liquid candy extracted from a hybrid grape named after a French marshal. Nature it seems, knows all of our needs no matter how diverse or contradictory or as simple or as  sweet as candy.

For a time we sat under middle eastern starlit sky taking in the night. We talked and passed around the bowel of pomegranate seeds. We opened fresh bottles of beer. In a quiet moment I realized that this was one of those rare windows in time. A few ticks of the clock when all was not just right with the world, but almost perfect. Yet in the thought of that realization, time slips and just for a second you become caught between frames, in that sliver of a moment between what is and when “what is” becomes what has been. Suddenly your thoughts turn to plans and problems, tomorrows and yesterdays through all forms of  distortion and distraction. That moment of just “being” is gone like a pleasant dream that you can’t recover simply by crawling back under a blanket. The moment had passed. I reached out and grabbed my beer, took a sip and turned to my focus to a conversation that had been going on in the ether around cloistered thoughts. Zohar it seemed, was missing Turkey. Hadas was laughing, of course.

- – -

I was reading the Patagonia blog this morning. The guys seem to be doing quite well although it’s been raining recently. Someone from Israel commented that they had just planted pomegranates and were hoping for rain.

* photo by Fir0002

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