Walnuts

I wrote this in June, then found it again when I was moving files to my Apple.

Always before, I shelled walnuts in the context of other activities. At one point in my life, while watching television––hard to believe now that I watch virtually no TV. I was always trying to get the task over quickly. It was a stop, usually unwelcome, on the route to somewhere else, like making cookies.

But today, I am shelling walnuts on a warm midsummer Sunday afternoon in a quiet urban backyard, and this is precisely what I wish to be doing with my time at this time.

When the nuts have my undivided attention, I see so many things. A half-shell, unscathed, would make a fine boat for a miniature sailor. I remember, as a child, fitting one out with a toothpick mast and a little paper sail.

The nutmeats are shaped like little human brains. Some people on the fringe of nutritional thinking have made the connection that they are therefore brain food. The thin, dry membranes that separate the halves look like pelvises. Perhaps they are good for childbirth, too.

The shells, wrinkles and scored––I wish now I had thought of walnuts when I needed an object to work on in a drawing class. I envisioned the subtle shading that would demarcate the indentations; the fine, trembling lines of the veins; the nobility of the complete shell, as simple as an egg but so much more complex.

I remark how the interior of the shell so follows the contours of the meat. Does the shell form the meat or does the meat form the shell? Does it matter?

I treasure each motion, sweeping of a nut from the bowl, watching the other nuts in the bowl shift when I take one, finding a useful point to leverage the nutcracker, hearing the sharp sound of cracking, exploring the feel and parallax of an individual nut as I turn it around and around, pulling at sharp edges, easing out the meat.

How could I have been impatient with any of this?