That's me, about to be eaten by Valdivian sea lions.
Doing capoeira, martial arts fight/dancing/craziness (explanation to follow in later blog)
Alright so it's not the tree, but it's a nice one.
Maybe it was doing capoeira in the Botanical Gardens today, maybe it was sipping about 6 cups of mate, but I got inspired. And as I was walking down a very nice cobblestone lined pedestrian avenue, I saw a very nice looking tree, leaves bristling in the wind. I thought I'd sit for a minute, and that minute turned into an hour, and when I was done I had written this. I don't have the picture of the tree on here yet, but I'll get it here soon!
Tree
Have you seen how the leaves dance to the wind's beat? The leaves, green and fresh, nod yes, yes, to life. I accept what you offer, I accept where you take me, I will dance to your beat.
This tree remembers. Its rings, circular like this life, show us how it remembers every single year. It remembers when the wind came, a month ago, and itself, so bare. Bare, no leaves to spare. Just an empty hulking figure proudly bearing the cold, beautiful in its vulnerability. It shed that most vibrant part of itself but it did not retract.
It said, "Wind, one day we will dance, bu today we just gently sway."
And then changed the season, as all things change, and it was time to dance. Have you seen how the leaves dance to the wind's beat? I did, one day, when I stopped to rest. The tree invited me and we danced together. He knew what he was, this tree.
And when I asked him why dance, why now in this moment, he said it was windy, and it was time to dance.
He seen sprouted flowers, the tree. He couldn't even contain his leafy dancing joy, so he bloomed life itself, and for a few precious moments he offered the world the vulnerable precious core of his being, his very life essence.
And he danced some more, the dance of life, and the wind fulfilled that most ancient compact to carry him and his offspring where she would, to land in the outstretched hands of Mother Earth and all her children.
I returned again one day, ready to dance the dance of love with the tree, and I found it bare, the vitality of its past rotting at its feet. It started to rain and its barren emptiness didn't even cover me.
"Where is the glory of your past?" I cried out, drenched in this terrible rain. "Where is your dance of love?"
It looked at me with the patience of a tree. "I learned to die so that I may live again," he said. "The former parts of myself I shed to enrich my blood. The rain has come and it is time to rest."
And I realized he was still dancing. How could I love his flowers but not love his death? They were one and the same, one following another in that precious circular rhythm that his rings affirm, that the perfect cycle of the full and new moon dance ever month.
I am a tree, I am the moon, I am the Sun and the Rain and the Wind that invites us to dance. I am not separate, even when I think I've broken off. I am not unwhole even when I only see parts.
The moon shows but a sliver, tonight,
yet its full illuminating
shadow shines through.
I did not realize until tonight,
that though the moon is so rarely full,
it is always present and whole.
So, then, are we.
There's nothing we have to do. We are given this gift and when the wind comes we can dance, when the rain comes we can rest, and in every waking moment we can be awake to that which we are.
"You scour the Earth," says the tree, "and still there you are."
And I say, thank you for inviting me to dance today.
Love,
Ryan
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