for the one who needs to climb to understand.

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“when we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: be still! be still! look at me! life is not easy, life is not difficult. those are childish thoughts… home is neither here nor there. home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.” -hesse

trees are extremely close to my psychic sense of self.. in fact, on a morning in which i had given away some keys to an old life- i climbed the tree in that photo at the edge of astoria park and found- another key, tied to a red string. life is all about the symbology we apply to it, the meaning we ourselves ascribe.. or else there is nothing. i will never forget how- in my heartache and restlessness i sat, read, communed, and wrote stories up in my favorite tree in fort greene part in brooklyn (which i later discovered was named by a little girl i ran into as ‘the grandmother tree’.. perhaps my nana sent me another grandmother on earth..?). i have beautiful memories of climbing trees with my brother and sister in rainey park in long island city- teaching my sister how to trust her wildness, my own self being spurred on by her presence to climb higher, abandon my fear. this piece came out of an interaction this morning- and i was just thinking of how i haven’t posted something non-event related in awhile.. here you are. thanks for the inspiration. and thanks to my brothers & sisters. the trees.

i am doing what i know. i cannot do what i cannot know. and so i do this. do not tell me not to climb the trees. to touch them, to trust them with my body, to be held by them as they hold me in psychic spirit, to rest, to receive. do you remember your girl-self, the explorer, who could only touch to understand- to press against, to peer, to look, to feel? eyes are hands sometimes. bodies are all points of an eight-sided starburst, each point a perceptor, antennae- in my vision the bears and birds gave me their feathers and furs- i am just beginning to remember the reason why. do not tell me not to climb the trees- how you anchor my movements in ego, the cement that sticks to my wild bones, hardening, separating- my soul from sinew, my song from self, the trees i give, they give, we give to each other. i feel their LIVING HEART, not as mere idea, but BREATHING- we complete the sacred circle, i hear their energy in my head. have you forgotten the will of palpability? of feelings beyond discernment from afar, ribbons of judgment cast down from lofty windows, tangled in branches of trees- why yes, i am sitting in. i feel as creature, i must do as creature, this is what makes me think without discord, perceive without pretense, REMEMBER that i can talk to souls that communicate without limiting sound-words through limited language i can no longer hear when my chest is pressed up against the bark so tight we can feel each other’s intention. love so purely encircling it is like the infinite warrior guardian i want to know how to be.. can be. if the trees teach me this, teach you this- why halt the force of echo, remembrance? i can only do what i know, just as you can. and this is what i know: i will climb the trees until my body can no longer. wild and grateful, still, to be healed by the medicine of my memory. do not pretend to know more than i know about the earth and what it wants, the trees and what they feel, my heart and what their hearts need to feel. i can hear them and so can you. we all know the same, we all know nothing, we are all prostrate before the altar of learning, listening- what you hear is different from what i hear, and that is okay. let the trees be. i am, i say, i am. i am feeling, holding, releasing, dreaming, reading, gazing, blessing, infinitely talking, feeling, seeing. to them, with them, as them. i hear them too loud to let them be. they hear me too loud to let me be. we are. being. .. are you?