Thursday, January 10, 2008

Rising from the Green Ashes

Needles follow the crinoline green tree like a wake as it is dragged out, on this day of unseasonable warmth and a rain that is barely more than mist. I know now. Comprehending in its enormity.

A criss-cross of green needles on the floor, over the carpets, down the stairs, so profuse the woods are overtaking. They crackle underfoot. They exude the intoxicating aroma of the resins of pine trees.

Were there lightly brown brushed earth and a firepit of dancing flames and a wide-starred sky. In the moment that the place buried in the core of the city turned into wilderness you came, and stayed. With your wild-boar ways, your genteel touch. We all wore our hiking boots in the small enclosure because the green was growing. We found half a red bird, shorn wing, lying, torn from the tree, while the other half flew around the room alighting on the couch or desk at whim, a red decoration, a whirling flame. Today was Epiphany, and it surprised us.

When you let the green in your veins flow instead of blue, verdant, fecund, rich. When we find the wilderness within the endless procession of us, passing by, layers upon layers of meanings, fluxes, the city crowds, where the wild where the red-feathered bird is whole, and sings like any decent phoenix.

I expect you to rise from the green ashes.

Is that tree tinsel, glittery, like pyrite? Be wary, the city offers satiations, pleasures, whatever you want. Is that what you're searching for? With obsessional focus? The tracks, pine needles stuck to your boots, falling off as you go, that I follow deep into the wilderness of your mind, where you dwell in loneliness mining yourself.

2 comments:

  1. "...mining yourself" - i love this idea. we are always busy in the process of mining ourselves if we are truly living, aren't we?

    how is it coming along there with the 3 of you living together? i would be having a hard time sharing my space, no matter how much love i might feel for those who join me/us. as much as i love my husband i enjoy/need some hours alone in our home when he is at work each day. then i am glad to welcome him home and happily anticipate our long vacations together!

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  2. Sky, oh, yes, the jostle between personal space and shared space is often difficult. Only for 2 years in the last 10 have the 3 of us had our own rooms, though, and so in a way we've learnt how to flow in our intense individualities while together. It's often a challenge, though! I do have rather a large, heated, windowed room in the basement that's slated to become a small studio for me but now will also become an office/chill out space for my son, and even perhaps occasionally a place to sleep that's quiet. Without that extra space, I don't even want to think about it!

    Thanks for asking - we can go the whole day without really talking to each other, but shared space is entirely different in a marriage to a mother and her kids, I think. The quietness for nuturing creativity, ah, it's all possible... somehow!

    xo

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___