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A New Year’s Toast: To Crapping Trees
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone in unchaging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.
-Hericlitus of Ephesus
So this is the New Year, and I don’t feel any different.
But I am different because the process of becoming different is just as important. It’s the subtle change, the unoticable growth that slowly molds us into the people we are to become.
Ironically, change for me meant consisency last year. My mailing address has been the same for 15 months. That’s 9 months higher than my previous average not counting growing up with my parents. My paycheck has been signed by the same person, twice a month, for the last year in a row. A feat I had never before accomplished.
I wouldn’t trade the stability I’ve had for the last year for anything. But on the other hand, the consistency in residence and employment has allowed things deep within me to rise to the surface and rear their hideous heads.
For instance? you ponder…
I desire to be alone way more than I ever pretended not to be. I say I am a leader, but I can’t find a more passive person around. I am a complete volume of half-made decisions continually reaching out to satisfy longings I have yet to grasp. I spend friviously, I harbor anger, I hide behind deceit, and my isatiable lust makes residents of Gomorah look like Sandra Dee lousing in all of her vigirnity.
I didn’t make that list to overwhelm you -or me. I made a list because it looks similar to the ones I’ve made in years past. I made a list because I’m beginning to understand the cyclical nature of my flesh.
Stay with me here…
Every autumn, trees take a shit. A big giant crap that children all across America joyfully frolic in. Seriously, every year trees push up all the dead and sick cells from the roots, trunk and branches out to the leaves which fall to the ground leaving the tree to recover.
And after a period of barren reflection the tree emerges green; stonger and larger. Only better for passing the decaying matter it had hiding in its root system. And so it is with me. With us.
The process is painful, and sometimes the dead leaves decompose back into the roots and we deal with the same shit next year. But it’s all we have, and the tree always emerges green. That’s not the varible.
(This is where we raise our glasses)
This year we toast not to the spring we know will come. This year we recognize, realize and begin to understand that barren reflection matters. These quiet moments that our soul clings to and longs for. This year mourning matters. Peaceful rejuvination until the tree emerges green again.
Change alone is unchanging. The beginning of a circle is also its end. The world says all is one, and yet everything comes in season.
Cheers,
Sam
greg January 9th, 2007 09:21 am
well put, sam. i’m only beginning to recognize the death in myself is where life grows from.
to the new year~