3.15.2005

Hush. Come out here a moment. Exhale and breathe in and taste the bright clean air with those taste buds way down deep in your lungs. Stop, just a minute. Shut off the voices, the nagging, the worries, the reminders, the distractions, the rush, and think about being weightless, unburdened. Breathe. Take a step back into your self. Look around. You’ll see the world much more clearly through your own eyes. Find your center of balance and stand like you will not be moved. Consider your strength, your poise, your connection with the wholeness of the world. Right now you have no inadequacy, no age, no complaint, no weakness. You are complete and whole, you are who you are, and the wind that rolls across your skin cares only that it has found something to touch. Seek peace in your mind and heart and soul. Be still. Dwell in silence.

The warm southern wind blew through the tall trees and I watched them sway, ancient firs on a high hill, they moved like figures dancing. A hundred years old, a hundred feet tall, so high they moved when the rest of the forest stood still and hushed, I could hear them sigh and bend and creak, soft singing tree voices, as the wind and sun moved among their branches. They cast dark shade, dappled across the creek and on the forest floor’s bare winter branches of huckleberry, vine maple, and the blooming brilliant yellow wild violets. The tiny feathered fir seeds came twirling down, they looked like pixie dust shining in the sun, specks of tree dust glinting in the sunlight. I stood looking into the sun, watching the trees sway and the seeds fall for what might have been hours, like watching the roll of ocean waves or the free motion of birds flying.

Ours is a brief existence, too short, over too fast, the erosion and decay inevitable. Tortoises and trees live more than twice as long as we do. We tuck ourselves away into plastic and metal boxes, and hide in paper caves, we cut the light from our eyes with glass. I can’t but I try to forget time; it is imperious and intangible and I can have no effect on it. I love to watch the seeds falling, the promise of renewal, rebirth, the continuance of wind in the trees.