The tallest tree in my forest fell. I felt closer to the sun,
like I leveled up skyward.
My grip on life loosened.
Suddenly. So suddenly.
The river of life goes on and on,
but my growth takes one direction: skyward, Sky
who had just changed shape before my eyes,
and I, one rung closer to the top.
The river goes on and on, yes, but today time turns back on himself. It’s her birthday again. And she's not here.
Today is the birthday of a woman who told me to always date my work, who collected buckets worth of pine cones, who nurtured the parts of my spirit I hold most dear.
Round and round we go, as time says, until it stops - until those moments when nothing will be the same. Moments of maturity, you can’t unknow, you can’t unlearn, you can’t quite go back the same way you came. From here on, ‘always’ and ‘never again’. These moments inevitably involve a death of some kind. And sometimes, death itself is the bringer of these growths.
After the shock of her loss softened, I got really genuinely interested, for the first time in my life, in old stories my friends a generation ahead of me would tell. I started to ask them about their parents, about who made them or unmade them into people I now call my friends, who I walk my own path with, for now, for however long.
Interested, genuinely, for the first time because I learned something I can never unlearn: it isn’t the living world alone that teaches, sustains and grows us, not only the seen fruits that nourish our spirits or extend our griefs. There's also a force unseen buoying us along, informing, unfolding in who we are and who we are becoming.
Through that force, our acknowledgment, remembrance and reverence towards it, time breaks down, collapses and reconstitutes itself through us, through our very being and living. We all carry those impactful souls in a stream through ourselves. Their coming, their being and their going is not lost on us. And so today, any day you're reading this, is a million souls’ birthdays (maybe more), billions of souls who are shaping this existence now, together.
I am thinking about her today.
Like the Horizon - skyworld touching earthplace,
Like the Shore - sealife lapping stonefloor,
Like the Sunrise - day brushing night,
Like the Mountaintop - haze blanketing form,
Like the Tree trunk - airfood growing earthmeal
I sit gently today at the edge places of what I know and can’t know, what I have and what I miss. I turn my gaze at the - yes - thin veil of sky but also the impenetrable brightness of sunlight I am always growing towards, impossibly hopeful for a glimpse of movement on the other side.
Happy Birthday one and all. We still miss you.
Full Circle | Personal Gate - Celebrating a Passed One