JACK: a story of enlightenment

Jack sat in stillness, feeling the plush softness of the grass tickling his firm skin. The sun shone onto his thick flesh, sending warm, tingly prickles through the crevasses that stretched from the tip of his vine to the button where his flower once grew. The chilled wind whipped around him, hugging every curve of his round, orange body.

It was a beautiful fall day in Jack’s pumpkin patch.

You see, pumpkins don’t have eyes or ears…so their entire existence is one of sensation, of feeling. But don’t dare think for a moment that they aren’t just as alive as us humans. The vines they grow from are bustling with the chattering of their pumpkin conversations.

This day, in particular, was especially abuzz with gourd gab and gossip. The pumpkin patch was officially open for the season, and they all waited anxiously, hoping to be one of the chosen. 

Talk of the ancient pumpkin prophecies zipped and zinged through the channels of their thick vines, down through their roots, and across the mycorrhizae in the soil where the stories were exchanged with their brothers and sisters…passed through generations from pumpkin to seed, pumpkin to seed, and so on.

Slowly, the chatter in the pumpkin patch grew quieter, as each of the chosen was whisked away. To where? None were sure.

Just then, Jack felt a warmth on his skin…hands. He was lifted into the air, turned from side to side and inspected. If Jack could breathe, he would have been holding his breath. He then felt the sudden, excruciating agony of a knife blade as it sliced right through his vine, leaving behind only a short stem.

His world fell silent. He could no longer hear the sounds of his brothers and sisters, and there was a powerful quiet that took hold of him, eventually giving way to loneliness.

Jack didn’t know what was happening…for he had no ears to hear and no eyes to see. Even though he felt the presence of two of his brothers beside him, he was swallowed by his misery, by his deep aloneness. 

Jack was changing.

Jack and his two brothers traveled for some time, and eventually were placed outside. Where, they couldn’t be sure. But every so often, they would feel a leaf graze their skin as it fell from a tree, or feel the warmth of a small hand pat their round edges, or feel vibrations across the earth as children ran and screeched and played in the grass nearby. 

They felt the light of the sun and the moon as day gave way to night. They felt the chill that grew stronger in the breeze with each passing fall day.

As the three pumpkins adjusted to their new existence, they learned to communicate without the use of their vines or their roots. And, together, they sat and pondered the sensations they felt around them, and the meaning of this new, “chosen” life.

They created stories, trying to make sense of everything around them that they could not begin to understand. But, all the while, there was an ache in Jack that he couldn’t explain. Something that wasn’t sure if he believed in the elaborate stories they told.

***

One night, the three pumpkin brothers were lifted and carried into a place that was devoid of the wind and the moon, where the air was stale and cold. They were set down onto what felt like smooth stone. It was time to decorate and carve the pumpkins for Halloween.

One of the brothers noted that he began to feel something cold and wet begin to sweep across his flesh, tickling his skin with its slippery softness. Then, the second brother began his transformation. They didn’t know it, but the children of the house were joyfully laughing and painting faces onto two of the pumpkins. 

“The prophecy is being fulfilled,” one brother said with pride.

Jack waited eagerly for his skin to be tickled with the cold wetness of the paintbrush. But the sensation never came. Instead, he was suddenly faced with the most indescribable, excruciating stabbing pain around his stem. He cried out in horror and agony as the knife blade sawed straight through his flesh and into his core.

His brothers were baffled by his pain. 

“Jack, do not cry. Soon you will be enlightened, as we are,” his brothers said to him.

As his stem was ripped from his body, Jack felt warm hands touch the core of his being, beginning to yank the guts and seeds from inside of him. 

“Not my seeds!” he screamed in misery. But the divine hands that emptied him could not hear his cries. Slowly, unbearably, everything that made Jack what he thought he was was being agonizingly torn from him. He could feel every seed as it was severed from his flesh. His brothers, silently, listened in both terror and curiosity.

Before long, the gnawing pain began to lessen, and a lightness slowly began to take hold of him. He could feel all the stories he and his brothers had created beginning to melt away…giving way to the most incredible, beautiful emptiness.

As Jack’s face was carved, a blinding light washed over him. After several minutes, the world around him began to come into focus, and, for the first time, Jack could see.

As he gazed around him, he could not speak. For all his life, he had believed that what he knew of the world — the sensations, the feelings, the darkness — was all there was. But he couldn’t have been more wrong.

After some time, the three brothers were laid back into the grass just below the steps of the front porch. Jack began to describe to his brothers all that he was witnessing. The grass, the sparkling night sky, the moon that beamed its soft light onto their skin. But they could not hear his words, for his new world was utterly out of their sightless reach.

His brothers sat, continuing to craft and elaborate on the stories they had created…the stories that Jack could now see were not the truth. They spoke of their own enlightenment, of the prophecy being fulfilled through them.

***

Over the coming days, Jack watched in silent awe as this new, beautiful world passed him by: children playing in the streets, birds twitting and flapping about, trees dancing in the wind, clouds floating in the expansive blueness of the sky. He simply took it all in, into the emptiness that now engulfed him.

Then, one night, something remarkable happened. Jack watched as a man crouched in front of him, holding something strange in one hand. The man removed Jack’s stem, exposing his inner emptiness to the cool evening air. Jack felt the man place something inside of him. Then, without warning, a bright light burst out from within him. The space which Jack thought had been empty was suddenly overflowing with the fullness of the light’s loving glow, beaming within him and touching what felt like every cell of his pumpkin being.

He looked towards his brothers with tenderness, quickly realizing that they did not have the eyes to see him in his blazing glory. Jack was enlightened. 

As his brothers continued to tell the stories of their own enlightenment, he gazed upon them with immense affection and love. For they knew not of what they spoke.

He sat quietly that night, basking in the light of the moon and the lively melodies of this All Hallows Eve. He watched the children merrily come and go, wearing their costumes and their masks, losing themselves in a world of stories and make-believe, covering the truth of what they were underneath. 

Just as his brothers did.