Letter to Leaf
I write this to you at a time of good spirit in my life. I am currently sitting on the bank of the Gundagai river, in the front seat of my car. For the last twenty minutes I've observed a standoff between a cockatoo and a possum in a large gum tree. This is what’s brought me great joy. The possum was trying to conceal itself in the gums hollow but the cockatoo was perched atop it, yellow mohawk flared, wings spread, calling out screech after blasted screech. The possum had a go at it, but knew the cockatoo was too terrible an adversary. I ended up having to walk over to the tree and toss a stick up at branch beside the bird. It took off, disappearing over the tree tops and I went back to the car. I’m not sure what it was about this that made me think of you but I did. Writing to you I feel able to see my own life clearer. You make me feel there is an order to all this and I am within that order exactly as I ought to be. My responsibilities are apparent, what is beyond my control is too. And so writing to you, I’m hoping to discover and solidify some of the simple lessons I am able to learn from my life and offer them to you. Maybe it can save you some time in your own development. I understand you must experience things for yourself to know them. But maybe my lessons can be some guide.
You are a ninth generation human being. You were conceived and born atop a mountain of history. Each step up the mountain offers a new lesson that if you give the time of study, you can realise how this mountain is shaped and understand how the place formed on which you were born. I am not sure where learning may get you, nor me, nor any of us. Who knows where the lesson of where this mountain will lead? Could it rise to Heaven? Could it crumble? I don’t know. But I know if you do not learn, if we chose to remain in ignorance, then war, ugliness and egotism is our certain state.
Learning is very important my child, but what is more important than that is that you practice openness. No matter what you may experience, if you do so with openness the experience can enter and join you in a more truthful form and so teach you more about whatever lesson it may extend.
I hope this doesn’t sound too dictatorial, I am your father, you are my son, I don’t demand anything of you and don’t expect you to obey me. I know I cannot offer you anything besides my guidance. You can chose to dismiss it or follow it however you please. My greatest hope, I cannot deny, is that you can find something in what I write here of some importance. I hope you can salvage a kernel of truth, see maybe something helpful.
It is wrong my child to think that your life is anyone else’s but your own. But too, that your life is anything other than in relation to everything and everyone else. You are both alone and connected by a thousand hands.
Sometimes people and organisations will try to reprimand you, whether it be directly or through some degree of separation. No matter how someone may come to judge you, it is important that you do not take such judgements without thought, without first looking into yourself and judging for yourself whether you are in the right or in the wrong, or in some grey where judgement must be upheld until more understanding of yourself and the world is seen. It is a dark lesson, but people and organisations may tell you they are working for your benefit, and so you ought to work for theirs, are not sincere actors in your prosperity nor in the prosperity of what you believe is good. It is hard, but you can stay strong, hold strong, and persevere with what you sense is innately true. You can be, in these moments, more than you are aware. You can be like a great gum in the way of a river, solid and humble in your goal. But such a tree splits the water along its trunk and takes from the water spilling passed only what it needs to sustain its growth. And such a tree is a home for the possums, the insects. Its root holds the soil together. Sometimes the force of the flowing river may be strong and forceful, but if you feel that in yourself to give into to this river would be to go against yourself, then you will be strong. If you stay true to that deep knowing in yourself, then no matter what flood, what torrent is rushing against you, you can feel inside quiet, harmonious and a sense of belonging with yourself.
But the opposite may be true. All may try to sustain the peace, the quiet, the stillness of a status quo that is against you and your beliefs. Then you may feel the torrent within yourself. Know, young child, that both are necessary, both are good. Follow the depth of knowing and it will teach you, let whatever it says to you become you, let what rings from these lessons reverberate through you.
We grow sweet child, just as all things do. Just think, when you were younger you wouldn’t have been able to even read this. And I hope there will be a time in the future when these words will read clearer and have some more depth than they may have now. This growth is beautiful and often scary, just as all real and unfamiliar things are. But fear cannot control you, for it will try to justify you in shying from the change which are coming upon you, justify you in stagnancy. It is this growth which is learning, which is the rising of the mountain higher. If I aim to get one thing across to you my Leaf, it is to support the openness of this growth. Be supportive of its processes, which is pure, more pure to you than you may perceive yourself to be. What you may see as your true self can become corrupt if you hold to this vision in the face of change. Help it to reach clarity, aim for translucency and hold from obstructing it.
Pay respect to your own past by tending to its rotten and bitter fruits, and respect your future by planting the seeds of flowers you wish to see bloom with multitudes of colour. Let your tides push and pull, ebb and flow, for all things good will help all things good. Do not block the moon when it’s there, nor seek it when it’s not. Let that force rise high, let it subside, let it the waves swell high and bring them crashing perpetually onto your shore. When the tide swells, when the waves break endlessly upon you, know that the tide will soon retreat, and the waves will be small and the ocean will look as a lake. Walk your shoreline on such occasions, see what the ocean and its waves have exposed. Anything you may find, shell; carcass; seaweed; drift wood: all are good and treasured artefacts, for all have come to exist in the depths of your mind, beyond what you can conceive. They are treasures because they contain knowledge you do not contain of yourself. Look to the moon for this reason, my son. Look at how it changes and listen to how the world is in swing with it. Get deep rest, listen to your mind and body with the ear of your spirit.
I must be going and that is my deepest regret. I wish I could be there for you and teach you all these things not with words but through my action. But I have listened to my spirit and I have heard what is necessary of me. I do not expect you to understand, nor anyone else, for it is my fate alone which I must bear. This expedition is before me and I hesitate only for a second to now write this to you. But I must soon step through this threshold, to go seek this wood I’ve now learned of and shape with it I feel is fated of me: the perfect flute that will resonate with all the beauty that permeates our world.
I don’t know how old you’ll be when you read this, but last I saw you, you were but an infant. When I return you may be a man. Before I left you, I spent the last moments sitting by your bed. Your face was soft, you were asleep. Your skin seemed to glow, as if blessed with some magic. I listen to your small lungs breathe, the slow breathes of R.E.M sleep and I felt love, and pain, and certain that you will be strong despite me. This moment—the image of your glowing, sleeping face, the eyes moving slightly behind the lids, how comfortable you made me feel—will remain with me forever. What you achieved in this sleep is a peace and harmoniousness with self and world that I wish to achieve.
When you lay your head down at night, wherever it may be, on a pillow, on some straw, on a hard floor, aim to reach R.E.M if you can. Surrender your beliefs, your confidence, your sense of knowing, and go again through the process of your life, see the images, feel the sensations, learn what you see is offered to you for it holds something of importance and meaning that you must learn. R.E.M will teach you what is useless, what is misleading, what is possible and what is true. R.E.M is full of colour. You may travel through it as yourself, as another, as wild beast, a child, an adult. Give presence and openness to these hours, for each has its importance in nothingness.
You do not have to wake up early. But think about how that could be beneficial for your life. It’s important to understand how anything you may do is beneficial for your life. For me, it is nice to sometimes wake with the sun just rising into my eyes. It is a time for me to be alone with myself, to think with ease from the fresh mystery morning always brings. Wherever you may find a moment like this, allow it to penetrate you. Allow it to calm and restore you, so that your mind, your body and spirt, are all prepared for whatever comes in that day ahead.
Mediate—it is an uplifting, powerful thing to return to nothingness. You will surprise yourself with the clarity in which beauty is revealed, encompassing both that which is labelled significant and that which is not. You can see these opposites as connected, like the two walls of a ship, coming to meet in the hull, where all that is in-between is being held in a balance, floating above the sea of subconscious. You can gain distance from any fear that may control your life and so regain your own control. A truly meditative mind seems to be free of obstruction and jaggedness. A truly meditative mind moves smoothly, curving along the road that travels up the mountains side. It can be difficult to discover this state: there are so many obstructions, so many forces acting on any one of us. But to not become impatient with it and deny what it is you haven’t yet learned. Many people say that we each have a specific resonance, and that this can be carefully translated into a certain word, that then becomes the mantra of the individual to recite in mediation. Something that has no specific meaning, but when it is repeated can calm, regain focus, bring you back to the middle way of your wandering thought and so come to mean multitudes. I don’t have a mantra of my own, but have found a similar outcome from listening to the warbles of birds. Each sung so similarly yet never the same. They seem for me to be the perfect focus for my attention. Not only can their songs bring you presence, but they also add a sort of playful theme to things. It is a bell that draws attention and also a bell that humbles you. There is nothing more present to me than sound.
Write your thoughts and ideas my sweat Leaf, good or bad, for once they are in words, you can study them easier, leave them or build upon them. They are no longer dwelling invisible, idling. But never forget that a word is also expression. What you write is not the entirety of what you mean, what you describe, what you understand. A word is a compression of what is in you. But this does not make them untrue, nor ugly. It makes them beautiful and powerful.
And also, do not let yourself drown in words. Do not let writing or eating something hinder you from listening or experiencing. Writing may indeed lead you astray from what you are trying to say in the first place. Recognise this, and play with it. Hold true to your heart, not to your words or any others. Writing can lead you to realisations, but they are not realisations themselves. What happens beyond words, in music, in the birdsong, in the resonating bell, that is the experience of realisation. Makes sounds, Leaf. Sing your heart out, hit wood to skin, strum steel, blow wind.
There is nothing more beneficial to your growth and the growth of this whole world than beautiful sounds that can somehow, beyond words, translate and inspire the beauty and meaning of this life. It is a language that anyone can understand. It is a language that the birds and the trees can understand.
Make sound, Leaf, and perhaps you will find a music inside of yourself, as unique as a birds warble, that you can transfer with transparency. Whatever the sound is, if you hear it, give yourself to it, and you channel the power of your innermost nature.
We are often organising ourselves around insignificant things, looking to rediscover something. Which has already been uncovered, looking to learn for ourselves a lesson that has already been learned. It is our nature perhaps, but I am not certain. You can give yourself to math, science, to the study of religious texts, to painting or teaching or music making, and you can find in anything a limitlessness of meaning for yourself. That is, as long as you feel within yourself that this endeavour is your purpose.
All that exists cannot exists without all that exists. One thing, must exist within everything. So too are you, am I. I must leave for this is my purpose. I hope these truths of myself, that I have been able to conjure thinking of you, is something to help, something you can reflect on and learn from. Till I see you again, my Leaf, in dream or in reality.
Your loving father, Solder.