Eternity
In the neighbor's yard, there is a dogwood tree. It is lovely in all seasons, dressed in white in spring, green in summer and purple russet in fall, a lovely vase of branches in the winter. From my backyard, I watch the birds fly into its depth on mysterious missions. Winds bend its branches and ruffle its leaves but never dent its dignity.
Today, the tree is caught half naked, the leaves starting to fall from the top branches first. I want to look at that tree forever, watching the fine branchlets scrape against the clouds. Just so. I could spend eternity with that tree, and I do, because the tree is part of my eternity, just as every moment ever lived, every experience, every emotion, every gasp of a dying child, every turn of a dragonfly's wing are part of this moment. This is now, and there is no other time.
The sky behind the tree, if there is indeed a behind or a before in the great melding that is manifested consciousness, is the bruised, brooding black and white of October weather. It reminds me of skies of before, the great tristesse of the waning season seen over scores of Octobers. But the memories are not the vision. How can I see this tree against this sky without remembering other trees, other skies? Looking at those clouds gives me a frisson of familiarity, of recognition. They are the clouds I saw when, at age 10, I stopped my bicycle and stared, transfixed, in a late Minnesota afternoon.
Those clouds, in 1960, framing a decrepit old barn, are my first memory of life imitating art -- I was reminded strongly of a painting of a windmill on a Guild jigsaw puzzle I had worked. I didn't like the Guild puzzles much, because not all the pieces interlocked, but I remember that windmill. And the barn and the trees and those painter's clouds, with their texture and their smudged, smoky edges. They were the essence of romance, of expectation and power, of something grand and delicious and unattainable.
How could I not have these memories? It is impossible to be merely present in the present, the now. ... Unless the now is every now -- my everynow -- all of the clouds on all of the days brought together and made manifest by the dogwood and its branches and the sky behind them.
10/19/2005
In the neighbor's yard, there is a dogwood tree. It is lovely in all seasons, dressed in white in spring, green in summer and purple russet in fall, a lovely vase of branches in the winter. From my backyard, I watch the birds fly into its depth on mysterious missions. Winds bend its branches and ruffle its leaves but never dent its dignity.
Today, the tree is caught half naked, the leaves starting to fall from the top branches first. I want to look at that tree forever, watching the fine branchlets scrape against the clouds. Just so. I could spend eternity with that tree, and I do, because the tree is part of my eternity, just as every moment ever lived, every experience, every emotion, every gasp of a dying child, every turn of a dragonfly's wing are part of this moment. This is now, and there is no other time.
The sky behind the tree, if there is indeed a behind or a before in the great melding that is manifested consciousness, is the bruised, brooding black and white of October weather. It reminds me of skies of before, the great tristesse of the waning season seen over scores of Octobers. But the memories are not the vision. How can I see this tree against this sky without remembering other trees, other skies? Looking at those clouds gives me a frisson of familiarity, of recognition. They are the clouds I saw when, at age 10, I stopped my bicycle and stared, transfixed, in a late Minnesota afternoon.
Those clouds, in 1960, framing a decrepit old barn, are my first memory of life imitating art -- I was reminded strongly of a painting of a windmill on a Guild jigsaw puzzle I had worked. I didn't like the Guild puzzles much, because not all the pieces interlocked, but I remember that windmill. And the barn and the trees and those painter's clouds, with their texture and their smudged, smoky edges. They were the essence of romance, of expectation and power, of something grand and delicious and unattainable.
How could I not have these memories? It is impossible to be merely present in the present, the now. ... Unless the now is every now -- my everynow -- all of the clouds on all of the days brought together and made manifest by the dogwood and its branches and the sky behind them.
10/19/2005
posted by Fran at 12:06 AM
