Yesterday Is But A Dream

“Look well to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In it lies all the realities and verities of existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it and it alone is life! Such is the salutation of the dawn.”

Amity

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

 

 

Andrew

It had been the third day straight that he had fallen asleep sobbing into his pillow, and this time it felt as if the tears would not stop flowing! His chest rose and fell in a slight tremble as he clutched his blanket tight about him in an attempt to stifle the onslaught of thoughts that harassed his mind. "I'm leaving first thing in the morning" he swore to himself, wiping the tears off his cheek with the heel of his hand. The sting of the cane seemed to leave stripes of pain across his arms and along the back of his legs. He had given up trying to soothe them with his hands but instead intended to use the burn as the fuel that would propel him toward his escape.

The boy flung the blanket off his body and rose in anger determined to make ready his belongings for his departure the following morning. "I can't wait that long" Andrew whispered to himself as he scurried off silently toward the closet where his backpack was folded and packed. He pulled it out and began shoving his clothing and toiletries into it. It was past midnight and the moon shone into his room through the lace, casting a yellowish tinge upon his face that glistened with the tears that fell from his brown eyes. The noise from his frantic movements and scurrying made it's way down the passage, into the room between the cleft of the door that was left ajar; and slid into his father's ears who lay asleep in a drunken stupor. The disturbance stirred the sleeper awake, forcing him to rise in a bout of rage that would no doubt be directed toward the culprit in the afore mentioned room.

Andrew who had now completed his packing began writing his note of departure when the door burst open admitting the fellow who fell victim to the clamor. His countenance resembled that of dark tempest at its apex in full fury! His brow was clouded and his dark eyes burned with a fire that even the greatest of beasts would recoil from. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?" came the voice that Andrew would later describe as thunder in the midst of an earthquake, it froze his writing and seemed to shine a light of great shame upon him that caught him so unaware that the answer he gave to his master was a stuttering procession of "I's" and "Um's". What followed was a repeat of what had caused him to cry himself to sleep for almost all his young life.

As Andrew's father shut the door after delivering the blows, the former coiled up like centipede when struck by a stone, and began rocking back and forth in a rhythm that mimicked the ebb and flow of his disturbed thoughts. The boy then looked up for a moment, calling forth strength from above. He sat thus for a moment or two before reaching for his backpack and coat and pushed his way out of his room and quietly found the key to the butler and door downstairs, unlocked both, and ran as if some force of fate gave speed to his feet. The wind flung his red coat back like a cape and the tears that welled up in his eyes blinded him so much so that he stopped to wipe them once more with heel of his hand. He hadn't given much thought to his destination, all he knew was that his legs would carry him to safety, as swallows do in the autumn when summoned by nature to leave their abode for a more accommodating  dwelling.

T. B.

Beautiful Things

"Inside the unlocked trunk was a blue sculpture. It looked like falling water, but it was really glass, perfectly clear, polished, flawless.

"What does it do" I asked her at the time. "It doesn't do anything obvious," she said, and she smiled, but the smile was tight, like she was afraid of something.

"But it might be able to do something in here." She tapped her chest, right over her sternum. "Beautiful things sometimes do"

T.B

All The Broken Things

I was deeply touched by a particular scene in Veronica Roth's book FOUR, where Tobias Eaton steals a moment of solace for himself in his room. He reaches down and retrieves from under his bed a chest of items that he had collected over his young life, and these items, hidden from his father for so long, captured in a moment the ideal that there is a profound beauty in all things that are broken and overlooked. And so as I read and re-read that particular scene I thought about all the "broken" things that I (if I were to own such a chest) would place in it; and here are but a few:

A broken pen: To me the pen is the epitome of defiance and bravery. It is one of two instruments which I believe can turn the course of destiny in a single stroke. Many wars have been started or ended by an eloquently worded sentence, and likewise many hearts have been won and lost by an equally constructed phrase. One should never underestimate the power of the written word I have been told, and I for one do not. The scribes of history have placed eternal notation which they turned to words which in turn formed phrases down upon stone, parchment and paper, since the beginning of time, and without them; we would have no collection of what came before us, what is, and what may be. So the pen in my chest is a tribute to the written word and to remind myself that without the ability to record my thoughts, they would disappear into that deep chasm called obscurity.

A shattered light bulb: A broken bulb, an item that can fill a room with such light which can chase the darkness away. I would place this item in my chest because perhaps there must be a certain level of darkness in order for me to find the light. This bulb would remind that no matter how far I stray into the darkness, I can always choose to turn on the light. 

A Broken Bow: I would place a broken bow of a violin into my chest because I believe it is, along with the ability to write, an item used to capture one's thoughts almost perfectly. I have always been fascinated by the grace with which a violinist can use a simple bow to draw forth a combination of sounds that can move one deeply. 

A forgotten pocket-watch: Time to me is a concept that seems to be ever-elusive and one which I seem to always loose, but I've found that if I can apply William Blake's concept about eternity existing in an hour, I can fully capture time's elusive nature in a moment. And this is why I would place a discarded pocket watch into my treasured chest. Time can be lost, but we are always gifted with the present moment.

Withered violet petals: "From the withered tree, a flower blooms" this profound proverb sums up the nature of transformation and resiliency, and to me, represents everything that Tobias placed in his chest beneath his bed. It represents the ability to rise strong after falling. The shrivelled petals represent the revolutionary ideal that we can make a choice not to be callused by harsh treatment, but rather choose to bloom beautifully like the violet in spring, after a harsh winter.

Thank you Tobias Eaton, you have shown me what it truly means to be a courageous young man.

<4

T.B