11:41pm May 7, 2014

Receptive language, the kind I actually excel at.

i understand the language spoken by soil and roots and growing things, from fungi to plants. I understand branches in the sky, sprouting further iterations of the same trees, which grow up and create their own iterations. I understand the moisture in the air and the soil, and the fungus that thrives in that moisture. I understand the way that all of these things are alive, how even the process of decay and death is alive and thriving and beautiful in its own right. I understand the sounds and smells. Sounds I can’t always figure out where they come from, but they center around one tree, a friend has heard them too.

The forest is my language. I’m an expression of the same language. This is not a fuzzy new age concept, but a hard reality that translates into every fiber of my being as home at the deepest level possible. I had a dream we were still living in the redwood forest, and that I was dying. My family carried me into the front yard so I could die on the ground, staring up at the trees. I was absorbed into the same place I came from, and it was more beautiful than beautiful.

That is my language. That is what goes into my body and makes my hands move in ways that show what I know, which parts of it I am paying attention to. That is what speaks to me in turn and makes me more whole than I thought it was possible to be. This is where I come from, and I will always carry a door to this place inside of me no matter how far I go. I am under the protection of the redwood forest, and a redwood forest once assured me that if I died there, it would dissolve me into itself. Which would be wonderful, if not likely in real life. I will have to settle for sending my ashes there.