Sunday, November 8, 2015

Olive / Pine / Fir



Family tree has got its roots in the sky, 
And a broken bird can fly
 ~Trevor Hall




When he was 7 his cat Hunter killed a baby bird. His scream pierced the spring morning air and he ran as fast as his little legs would carry him. He didn't make it in time. For weeks he refused to even look at hunter He wouldn't step foot outside. The world became an evil place; dark and cruel and chaotic. His world stood atop its own head.  

The Enchanted Forest. You took me there every time I came to see you. It was one of my favorite places on Earth. A forest full of fairy tales. Maybe it was because my inner world read like a scene from Alice in Wonderland; full of wondrous sights and terrifying sounds, an air of adventure set to a mood of ominousness. A winding path that lead through slanted houses and rainbow waterfalls.

When I wasn't in awe then I was most likely to be found cowering in fear. Fireworks, motorcycles, sirens, bright lights, anything in motion that I was asked to get into. The thought that my toys might be in a different order in which I had carefully placed them. I was scared of being with mom. I was scared of grandma when she drank. I was scared that you were going to leave me again.

I lived in a reality that was beyond my understanding. It was loud and bright and it could change in the blink of an eye.
I kissed Danny on the cheek and wished him good dreams. The next morning everyone told me that he went to live in the sky. I sent him balloons with letters tied to their strings.
We were all at the park. I finally gained the courage to scoot on my bottom across the wobbly wooden bridge. It was cloudy and drizzly and I was happy. In the following memory mom is telling me that we have to live here now, with these strangers. That she didn't know where my velveteen bear was.
I had hair like a moth ball and wore Strawberry Shortcake glasses over my lazy eye. They called me a porcupine and pretended to be pricked by my quills. I ran away during recess with a backpack full of library books and a burning desire to never return.
I curled up behind the couch; my eyes squeezed shut, holding pillows to my ears, rocking back and forth. I could still see the lights flash and hear the thunderous booms as the fireworks exploded and I wondered why I had been born on the wrong planet. I wasn't created to withstand these noises. To endure this disorder. To untangle these emotions.

You were my escape, my way out. A magic trick. You were pancakes and agates; colored pencils and quiet places. You were my best friend.

 You were just as scared as I was. I didn't know.

When you left, I hid. I have spent much of my life curled up in a ball hiding behind a couch. It got too bright, too loud, too confusing. I want to tell you the story of my life in hiding. But I also want to tell you the story of my emerging.  You helped me uncurl, to take a peek.  I held pictures of us in my mind. Images of us running on the sand with our heads looking back to the kite we held in our clasped hands. Skipping through the mall making bird noises while drinking Orange Juliuses. Sitting next to you, watching you draw and willing myself to make time stand still. I studied physics and embraced the idea that space and time are curved and that time and events do not exist in the way that we think they do. Physics told me that I could go back and sit by the sea with my you.

My little olive tree also ran and hid from the world. It, and his best friend, had betrayed him. He learned the lesson that, in the end, he had no control of the world. He cried for days. I was scared that he wouldn't stop, that it was too much. But it wasn't. He stood up and wiped his tears.. He cuddled Hunter and told him that he forgave him. He forgave the world its transgressions. He couldn't save that bird but I believe that that bird gave him a gift that day, he learned something at 7 that it took me close to 30 years to learn, he learned to fly.






Sunday, October 11, 2015

Olive

"O olive tree, blessed be the Earth that nourishes you
and blessed be the water you drink from the clouds
and thrice blessed he who sent you
for the poor man's lamp and the saint's candle-light."
~Folk song from Crete




I was taught, by a very brilliant man, that there are 2 ways in which we humans actually know something. By far the most common form of knowledge that we posses as a species he called "knowledge with a lowercase k". I know, (small k), so many things. I know that time is not linear.  I know that we as  humans are destroying the only home we have ever known. I know that we are all connected by cause and effect. That we have spent our entire existence making choices that have caused waves of sorrow and rage to come crashing down upon our own heads and the heads of everyone else, even those yet to be born. I know that we need to live in the moment. I know that we should treat everyone with kindness. I know that, in the end, we are all the same: Made up of the same star stuff; Constantly exchanging particles and ideas. I know that the world, as it exists right now - school shootings and mountain top removing - is but a mirror image of ourselves. Knowing something with a big K, however, is something else entirely. 

Most of the time, I live my life as if the Crystal writing this is the only form of myself that exists. I forget that the old women by the sea, the one with grandchildren and wrinkled hands is also the little pig-tailed girl burying her dad in the sand. I drive my car and consume my goods. I forget the next generation. I know that the innumerable hurts that have been bestowed upon me have turned inside out and been carried away on the wind. We are distracted, cruel and unaware, I know that you are me and I am you. 

If you can recognize them for who they are, teachers intersect your path. They hold up the mirror. They push you off course. They shake your foundation. They pick you up off your feet and fly you up above everything where, for but a brief moment, you can see it all. Knowledge. 

The olive tree has been one of my greatest teachers. 

It was the gift of wisdom from the goddess Athena to the mortals below. In times of war, couriers were sent with olive branches in their hand as a symbol of peace. On the 23rd of September, when the light and dark are in perfect symmetry, the Celts celebrate the olive as a symbol of balance. It's oil healed the sick and brought light into the darkness. And it was a dove carrying an olive branch that brought hope where it had been forgotten.

On the day that he was born, March 31st, I remember watching the blizzard rage on as I was wheeled into the operating room. I was a frightened 16 year old girl whose soul resembled a battlefield strewn about with the injured and dead. She had slapped me and called me a whore. You said that it wasn't a good time. She was a shell of the women you remember, the one who said that she loved the feeling of the waves pulling the sand from beneath her feet because it made her feel like she was weightless. The one who encouraged me to be creative and used markers to draw all over my arms and legs. I was also a shell. Becoming that way seems to be directly correlated with living in that house. I lost count of the saplings in the forest. I couldn't remember that feeling of weightlessness. And then he came into the world, all 6 pounds 7 ounces of him, and he brought the sun with him. 

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Pine: I

We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires and comets inside us.
We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.
-Robert McCammon


Humans are natural disasters. We are mirror images of the forests, oceans and valley floors that surround us. We are doves, capable of extending an olive branch. We are the quivering leaves of an aspen. We are the rocks made smooth by the crashing waves that beat upon us. If we could see ourselves as we truly are, we would weep at the beauty.  We are earthquakes that rip the land asunder. We are tsunamis rolling over everything in our wake. We are pebbles thrown into a pond. We are chapters of a forest. 

I have always had a hard time with our species. It has always been easier for me to deal with us as a forest as opposed to individual trees. We seem clearer as a whole. Easier to hold in my hands. Like holding a globe, you can see all the patterns and connections. I see honesty and compassion. I see anger and resentment. I see fear. Fear is the water. It makes up 75% of who we are. I am scared to write this.

So much has happened since I spoke to you last. A forest has burnt to the ground and been reborn from its ashes. I'm in love with that idea. Death as birth. Winter as spring. Suffering as joy. I think it started on our road trips to the coast. The wind blowing in our hair. Roadside Pancakes and Green Day on a loop. We could smell the fish and feel the sand in our toes. The best part , besides the pancakes and Green Day, was driving through the ruins of the Tillamook forest. The Tillamook forest fire was a series of four wildfires that raged over a span of 18 years burning 355,000 acres of old growth timber. There was nothing left. A forest of skeletons. But then something magical happened.  It happened so slowly that I almost missed it. Little green saplings growing out of the ash. Every time we passed through I searched for new life and kept a running tally in my mind. I was that forest's biggest fan.

When you left, my life burned to the ground, but saplings grew from the ashes. I want you to know me. To know them. To read our chapters. Dad, this is my olive branch. 

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Pine

"The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience -- they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity." ~Friedrich Nietzsche




It's so beautiful here.

Every once in awhile a day will go by where I fail to rise above my own life, my own self importance, to really see the mountains. It breaks my heart. I was twelve when I first came to Utah. I felt like I was in a fairy tale. The mountains are so close. You can reach out your hand and touch them. They cradle you in their arms, protecting you from the rest of the world.

In the fall it's nirvana. The crisp clean air. It reminds me of home. The leaves blanket the mountainside, which I'm lucky enough is my backyard. There is nothing like hiking in the cool aired, warm colored mountains after spending a summer in the scorching desert. There is football on Saturdays, even though it has been more years than I can remember, I would never betray that ritual. Everything is flavored pumpkin and the trees have never been so beautiful.

It's a whole other world here. I could write volumes on the oddity of Utah culture. And oh how I miss the people of the great Northwest! Sometimes I get so lonely that I feel like I can't breathe. But then I remember that I live in Utah and that it's the just the air quality and that I really can't breathe. I'm always homesick. Every time it rains I am given an incredible gift. It's euphoric and inspiring and filled with my dreams of returning. Sometimes, when the winds kick up, you can smell the Great Salt Lake as you walk through the art filled streets of the city that I have come to love so much. I pretend that it's the ocean and the world I am inhabiting instantly becomes the love child of rocky ocean cliffs and salt-sand beaches. I'm coming home, soon.

But I stand by my decision of red rocks over volcanic ones. I found my forest here. And by its trees, I have been taught how to live. 

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Douglas Fir


Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. 
~Ralph Waldo Emerson 




I live the greatest life.
    Do you remember waking up at five in the morning? That magical time when waves, remembering that they are the ocean, return home. It was just low tide but, to me, it looked like a homecoming. 
  As the waves embarked on their journey home they would leave us treasures, agates. And with our sweatshirts, flashlights and black garbage bags, we also would embark on a journey. I loved every agate I laid eyes on. I held them in my hands and imagined all the stories they could tell. The ocean taught me so many lessons. The first being that there are riptides and those things are fucking scary. The forests of Oregon taught me. When I am feeling hopeless and angsty about the state of the world, I just image that we are all trees in a grand forest. It's a lot easier to deal with Donald Trump when Donald is an Aspen tree. 
   I live in the best forest with the five coolest trees. I wish so much that you knew them. That you had seem them grow.