My Meyer Lemon tree is in full fruit. If I lived on a patch of green in Los Angeles, that wouldn’t be noteworthy. Hell, a chopstick will bloom in LA if you give it enough water.
Except I’m in a house in Minneapolis where the remnants of a sub-zero winter are still a recent memory. And my poor little lemon tree survived an infestation of heaven-only-knows-what last year, only to be rendered into a few dull leaves stuck on a bit of trunk stuck in a bit of soil stuck in an old clay pot.
Fortunately for me and my Meyer Lemon, my muse Alicia has never lost faith in the potential of the malformed and misbegotten. Under her watchful eye and ever-gentle nurturing, Meyer and I survived the Minnesota winter. And we have thrived.
If you don’t know Meyer Lemons, let me explain my unbridled excitement. First off, she’s a bit of a mess, leaves and branches sprouting hither and yon, with no sense of the “proper way” little trees are meant to grow. Still, through the rubble of her growth, symmetry be damned, there’s something of beauty there. It just takes a bit of extra time to see it.
Once past the disarray, her leaves are dark and richly green; her flowers a soft maroon-white with a room-filling aroma that’s seductive and alluring, rich with the scent of sweet citrus and honey. Her buds are plentiful, each birthing a tiny green globe.
Almost two months after it began, my tree is now heavy with little fruits nestled amid her green leaves, each globe tugging its branch lower to the ground day by day. And even as her fruit grows, majestic white flowers continue to bloom and fruit and scent the entire room. Like a good lover, she is endlessly tantalizing and lush and generous with her bounty.
Before long, those little green lemons will grow golden and round and decidedly edible, with a taste that’s almost 
orange but not quite, almost lemon but not quite. It will be mostly sweet with an undertone of sour and a peel as good as the inner fruit. When you first share your mouth with a Meyer Lemon, you know you’ve never tasted anything like it before. And you know you want more of it.
My sweet Meyer is greater than the sum of her parts and better than her lineage. She’s a surprise, a delight to the eye and the palate and the mind. Whoever tastes her sweetness is left marveling at whatever transformation delivered such unique sweetness, so unlike the industrial-level, one-note, supermarket lemon.
Movies are supposed to be like that, too. The good ones anyway, the ones worth biting into.
The best movies take time and nurturing to survive. They need to be a little surprising and greater than the sum of all their parts. Almost palpably alive, great films deliver a whole world, first with sweet seduction, then slowing revealing everything of themselves, bit by sweet bit, until they stand before you, exposed and naked.
AHA, you say, so that was what the opening seduction had been about. Now I see, now I know, now I can make it mine.
And you open yourself up to inhale something richer, sweeter, greater than the sum of all its parts.
Films are immediate things, meant to be discovered and explored, captured and ravaged, consumed and ingested. And meant to be revisited, too, like old friends, welcome any time, rich with wisdom and history, comfortable in their own skin, yet lush enough to be savored again and over again.
Of late it seems that far too many films are over and done as fast as they came. A one-night-stand best viewed in a darkened room and followed by a quick shower.
What a shame, what a waste.
Movies have the potential to be art. Real art, not some lemon of a grindhouse supermarket closeout, but a thing of beauty. Rare and special. Not something flat and stale, but a whole world of surprises and adventures.
That choice is ours. After all, we are the creators.
Every time we dream another film into existence, we get to make that choice all over again. We can sledgehammer home one sour note. Or nurture the impossible and uncover subtle variations with the power to turn lemons into art. Before we begin, we need to know what kind of world we want to create and savor.
I want a world where I get to watch my sweet lemons grow. I want to savor her scents and be seduced by her flowers. I want to drink deep of the best damn lemonade I’ve ever tasted.
All that in one sweet little metaphor nestled on my windowsill. What will you choose to grow…?
