MORNING Breath in, breath out. Your discomfort escalates in two heartbeats. Your body reacts, to what? you ask yourself while thoughts skitter and jump in your mind. Meditation usually helps, but your belly aches and swells and your sweat smells horribly. You reach for Verbena, her steeped leaves in aid for what? you ask again waiting for the tea to brew and cool enough so you can sip. Ages go by. How long have you been waiting for this? The lemony scent can’t suppress the earthly waft that persists, that speaks of long-dead things, of decay and rot and writhing beings in the dark humid soil where life begins. You drink. The astringent aftertaste clings to your tongue. All are welcome, breathed in, swallowed, the cup empty. Under its brim a yellow-green ring remains already dried up from the heat of this summer day that’s mercifully hunted by a fierce northerly—unsettling this wind, he comes with threatening outbursts. You’re safely tucked in or so you think. AFTERNOON The day is long and you spend it walking on grey tiles you so dislike, tiles that erupted on a Christmas day years ago sending chips up in the air, their unnerving cracking sound crawling from feet to spine bursting in your chest, tiles remaining crooked, patched and glued ever since. You walk back and forth through the rooms of this house you never liked, bumping into askew walls, listening to the wind creeping down the chimney and blowing past the immaculate tiles of the fireplace—a fireless place you’ve always wanted to dismantle—through you, past you, where to? EVENING Wind gets tired, cicadas’ thrumming song gains decibels and the fog in your brain dissolves. You settle down with a book. NIGHT Mourning is the word that hits you in the middle of the night, a slap in the face that wakes you up, an epiphany that bursts with lucid clarity enveloped in a sadness that finally makes sense. Letting go the part of yours that brought you here breaks your heart—tears won’t do, a simple nod and a gentle bow—but you can’t linger for too long. It’s time. Go find your tree.
This past week:
I wrote a poem and an introductory note for a photography project my husband submitted to a contest, wish him luck!
I finished reading David George Haskell’s The Song of Trees and Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree.
I watched Treeline: A Story Written in Rings and while the snowstorms depicted in the film made me forget the ongoing heat, it’s not why I liked it so much. Konami Tsukamoto, a famous Japanese Tree Doctor, affirmed the closing words I had just read in Simard’s book and made me cry twice on the same day.
I started reading Tempest Terry Williams’ When Women Were Birds and I can’t put it down.
I had a great time with friends over coffee and lunch on a weekday. Normally I would have been at work. After nine years in the same job and twenty years in the same occupation, I’m on my fifth day of not having to go to work, having no idea where I’m heading.
Beautiful because it is! I love how the mind moves through your atmospheric descriptions which encapsulate a feeling and I walk barefoot on those tiles and feel their bumps and edges on my feet as I move through this room's floor. Beautiful because as magic you combine dismantled floor tiles and fireplace and it reads like poetic flow! Loved your this week part two. Like having coffee in the afternoon and a chat with a friend.
I am so glad I found your writing/poetry/humanness. That was an immensely satisfying read yet again.
And a huge congratulations on having no idea where you’re heading. Bliss.