The first few steps I took into the grass I didn't really know what to look for. I started by jotting down things I noticed around me. A squirrel's leap from the ground onto a low hanging branch. Certain thoughts I had about flowers. The setting sun and the clouds covering it. As I began to realize these observations and process them, I found myself admitting that these situations weren't plain and arbitrary. I saw children skipping down the track and saw the future. I heard laughter coming from underneath a certain gazebo. The kind of laughter that, without even looking at its source, convinces you of its worth and almost has you laughing as well.
A little further down the path I noticed a particular tree with dead leaves lying all around its base. Dead, brown, and probably even rotting leaves.
In Virginia, the leaves are beautiful when they die.
In a park where almost every tree, bench, sculpture, and exceptionally large ditch has a name and plaque in commemoration of something or someone, I found myself thinking of the reds, browns, and yellows that leaves take on when they fall from their tree and the colorful blanket they create on the Earth. Seeing that clump of brown leaves reminded me of this and I wanted to see Nature be beautiful as it died. Surely I wouldn't ask a mauled antelope to do the same.
Perception. The all-important factor in ... well, everything.
If keeping the name of a loved one on a bench helps sooth a soul in pain, then so be it. To each their own.
All around the park there were tools working for the preservation of life. The track to facilitate running, the plaques to keep the names of the dead on our tongues, the preservation efforts in the park (No Fishing signs, etc... this may also have something to do with the fact that more than likely the fish are not edible), golfing to ease the mind, and even the aforementioned brown clump of leaves will eventually be a well of life for worms or another tree or ants perhaps. Civilization does not let go of much. We like to remember things and know where we came from. That's all well and good, but these are factors of our Earthly realm. We don't know where we were before our first breath in this world. We don't know where we're going after our last. One thing is for sure. While breathing, we remember those who take breath, took breath, and will take breath. My point is, could we be spared the sorrow of a lost loved one if we simply accept our position of mortality on this Earth? Why do we seek to be made immortal by the actions of this life and in doing so make mortality impossible? Once born, we make impressions on our surroundings that are permanent even after the spirit leaves the Earth. Regardless of time or accomplishment. In fact, I'd wager the soul cries its hardest in losing a young loved one.
I've heard the notion that a person isn't dead until the last person that remembers them passes away.
Again, perception.
The living care for the dead longer than the dead care for themselves.
Of course, it's possible that the dead miss the living just as much as the living miss the dead.
This blog is getting harder and harder to write as the night goes on. The "noon of thought" and scary noises.
My entire experience in Audubon is actually too much to write about. I conversed with a man about his grandson who plays in band over at Tulane. I thought it was interesting that this man who I'd never seen in my life was so eager to share the name of his family. Here, he perpetuates the life of his grandson by spreading his thoughts. He also asked me if I was there to study or look at all the pretty girls running.
The last thing I'll mention was my game with a squirrel. Now, I'm not crazy, but I'd like to think that we played hide and seek. I followed him around the tree a few times until finally he got savvy and jumped to the top and looked back to make sure I wasn't behind him. Now this was surely just a defense mechanism on his or her part. But again, perception, and so hide and seek it was.
Leaves falling from trees = birth and death of humans
the cyclic nature of Nature is apparent in our surroundings. this is plain to see, but for some reason humans want to complicate it. we want to live forever and keep it all. i'm not saying that i'm ready to die tomorrow but i know what's going to happen when i hear that bell toll ...
well, kind of.
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