A torrent of wind and water and the blue disappears from the sky, leaving slate gray and silver streaks like knives cutting, deboning houses and slipping trees from sodden ground. And then nothing. Silence and the sun slips onto the surface for minutes, feeling like hours. Children, tempted to dance in the spitting rain scurry back behind boards over windows and the tempest slams sideways into the world again....
Before you begin, consider the atmosphere of the day. Take stock when the day is humid and hazy and the sun never seems to move beyond the burnt orange hue. Or is there not a cloud in sight, with not a drop of moisture in the air and a brilliant cerulean sky above you? Perhaps the mood is changeable with a brisk wind and clouds that seem to shift and move every minute....
Take a moment to hold a single, specific tree in your vision. Now turn away and try to visualize the same tree in your mind. Turn back to the tree and consider that the tree is alive. The tree is growing right now; pulling water from the ground. Return to holding the same tree tomorrow, and the next day....
Before action, there is thought, and before thought there is breath. Breathe intentionally sometimes. In through your nose, and out through your mouth. Breathe. Take that thought in your head, picture it on a piece of paper, and let the paper fly away in a breeze, land in the river running past you, and disappear. Now do it with the next thought. And the next one. And breathe again....
Imagine for a moment a tree. Hold the shape of it in your mind a moment. Consider where it draws its strength. The soil, moisture, minerals. Now imagine a human. Hold our shape in your mind. Consider where it draws it’s strength. An inverted tree? Not bound to the soil below, but to the heavens above. Inspiration striking like lightining and causing our passions to grow....
What if we were indestructable? A blaze of light and ground shaking thunder tears through our awarness and then nothing for a moment; sleep by any other name. And we awake years later coming to understand our new surroundings. A roll of dice and oak tree woods and the ocean are replaced by alpine meadows and pine. Isolated from earlier experiences, how would we know? What choice do we have?...
Caught in the wire, with neither the agility or intelligence to free itself, the sheep suffocates. Justice lays over humans like the shepard to their flock, untangling us in moments of dread, and slaughtering us when our duty is fulfilled....