Autobiography on an uprooted tree
Answers
Explanation:
Imagine the body, this body, in it’s true form. It is not a skeleton. Not a skeleton over-layed with muscles and tendon, whizzing nerves and electrical impulses. No. The body, this body, is every story handed down from Eve, passed mother to daughter and then the daughter becomes a mother, to hand the story down again. The body, this body, does not weigh in pounds or kilos, a measure of the inescapable pull of gravity. The body, this body, is borne upright, to walk, to run, in dreams to fly, borne upwards, ever upwards, forwards and forwards, by all the stories first born and then carried within.
There are no skeletons here.
There are trees.
There are trees with their great roots stretching down, down, down. Down so far, the roots come up again in the south pole. There are trees whose trunks arabesque forward, a sun salutation. There are trees hidden, deep within the old forests, sheltering the crone. There are no skeletons here. There are branches waiting to bud, branches clothed in leaves and some branches, naked- hibernating.
These are the truest stories I’ve ever told. They came to me by my mother. They came to me in whispered lullabies and soft caresses. They came to me in dreams. They came to me carried by hushed voices when no one thought I was listening. These truest stories are the ones I know in my tree trunk-tree-branch-tree-root bones. These truest real stories are the only things I really own.