I stand here, under the the burning tree. A rain of lightning casts shadows of each hill. They are the bones of giants, left from the last great days when heroes could call from mountain tops and have eagles take them back home.
The World Stands Before Me
We live in a world of noise. A world which runs like those fast-forwards of people crossing streets and sidewalks.
This is normal.
We live in a world where petrichor is replaced by television to the point, most might not even know what petrichor smells of.
(Dust after rain).
This is normal.
We live in a world of toys. They blink, flash and distract from realities, cause arguments within layers of fantasy which bleed out until all the streets we walk have been inked into new colours.
This is normal.
The Wanderer
Where is the heroine? Brave and witty, quiet and sneaky; she never gives up and never gives in to the fates.
Where is the grassland? Wide and reaching toward the sunrise where the woods burst from earth in a wave of green leaves and silver branches.
Where is the ship? Lithe and quick, sharp and deadly as the swans which soar over rivers. It flies with them to the clouds, where the golden eagle waits.
A Letter to the Little Girl From the Traveler Who Fell Out of the Attic
Dear Little Girl,
Never drop that bit of charcoal which turns your thumbs as black as the mice who nest in the chimney. It will keep the monsters out of your closet and from under your bed long after you leave this house and you meet the real ones who walk outside, in the skin of stranger friends.
Let it give name to those chimeras which stalk your notebooks and roar to the phoenix which soars through the flip book you made of the old world atlas you mother wanted to throw out.
If you leave it in the tree house, I have it on good authority the fey will have a bit of fun one evening and make it leap out of the book. It’ll fly into the sun and always watch you, no matter what bridge you find yourself stranded under.
And when the night darkens the sky, remember to keep your monster killing flashlight with you; it works as a miniature moon, on those twelve-struck times when all other lights have gone out.
Always keep a bit of string, a pair of scissors and a roll of tape with you too. They come in handy when you’re faced with cracks. Do you remember that one which grew from a dot to a scowl over thirty days and nights?
You’ll find more of those and not all of them will lead to worlds full of purple trees and fireflies. Some will lead to the between places, where there is more than monsters at the end of books to make you more than a few bags of cats, crazy.
You’ll go down a few cats. And I don’t just mean you’ll go a bit crazy (and that’s okay by the way), I mean; you’ll travel down a few dimensions. Yes, that picture you drew of cats holding up the universe was not a silly dream. It’s reality. Trust me. You’ll live it soon enough one day.
But most of all, don’t eve let go of that piece of charcoal. You always need a voice and pictures are the most powerful voice of all. No matter where in the universe you may be.
Go live, draw, and imagine, little girl. You have worlds waiting to be sketched.
Blessings and wishes,
Your Future Self.
Sky, Can You Hear Me, From a Dreamer
If you’ve ever shouted from a mountain top, you’ll know what I mean. And if you haven’t, I want you to go try it sometime soon. It’s a good exercise in both humility and empowerment. On one hand, you feel so small, against the backdrop of the sky and the wind. On the other hand, you feel so vast and enormous, as far up from everything else as you are.
The internet is like that. Life is like that. Waking up and wanting to go back to sleep because what is the point when everything you do is just a repeat of yesterday and would anyone actually be bothered, beyond your parents if your atoms took a trip on the breeze with a pack of dandelions?
We, each of us, are a thousand voices and a thousand thoughts. Things with are coming and going as quick as each of these drabbles. Yet, for the seconds that they exist, that we and our actions exist, against the backdrop of the billions of years the Earth has been and will be around; we make a noise. It lingers on the air, it rises, it drops and it bursts into a million atoms which will join all the other atoms which make up the universe.
Thinking of things that way, in some ridiculous poetic style, makes Van Gogh’s of us all. In ways that don’t account for lack of sleep, bean and rice diets just to scrimp pennies that don’t actually exist in your currency anymore or the continued scribbling of ideas that don’t qualify you as anything other than a scribbler, makes all of that, just for a moment, worth living a thousand times over.
More of us could do with wandering nature at the slow pace of a spring breeze. Even if the world seems like it is burning, it still turns and it will still turn, long after each of us has gone.
So for now…Go forth and climb a mountain this weekend!
What will you shout from the top?
ARR.
This week’s post brought to you by a favourite song by a favourite band and a film that I desperately need English subtitles for. (The Legend of the Demon Cat, a story of a Chinese poet and a Japanese monk teaming up to discover the truth behind the death of the emperor and the supposed, cursed cat).
And also, this interview, which gives a view of us “pesky” millennials, by a millennial.
