Whispers Among the Trees Exhibit at T.O.L.K. Gallery in NYC

Tell me 

How do I know which way to go? 

I want to know

I want to know

I went to the river and I asked, 

How do you know which way to flow?

But the river just looked back at me and replied, 

I don’t know

I just am 

And I just flow

So I went to the garden

Looked down at the weeds

How do you know which way to grow?

And how do you feel when they cut down your brothers and your sisters?

But they just stared back at me and said simple and plain, 

Doesn’t change the truth, 

We just are

We just keep growing 

We don't know why and we don’t know how

We just keep going 

It’s in our roots

It’s in our stems

We just know which way to grow

Even as we don’t know anything

So I looked up at the heavens 

And I prayed 

How do I know which way to go? 

Are there any answers? 

Why are the truest answers 

The questions themselves?

But the sky just replied, 

I hear you asking 

Don’t you find another reason to doubt it

I don't have any answers for you, my friend

We don't know

We just are

We keep on existing

We keep on flowing

We keep on growing 

We keep on living anyway 

What more is there?

What is more true than we exist, even just for a little while?

Human form, a way for your spirit to exist in this world for a time

To question, to be, to live, to exist 

To get to exist

You exist!

We exist!

Sweet child of the universe, 

All you need to do is live

As you are 

Exist, exist

Why sing? Why did this strange human choose song, of all things? 

When there is nothing left for me to say, I sing. I guess I sing what I cannot say. I paint what I cannot say. I dance what I cannot say. It’s not that I don’t want to speak the words aloud. It’s just the truth, the heart of the matter … it moves. Each time I try to grasp something, put it into words, describe, describe … it all gets muddled again with more questions. But when I sing, when I paint, when I dance, it’s all true … I can embody the heart of the matter for a while yet I cannot ever describe it. I cannot ever put it all into words. 

So why, human, why do you write?

There are so many things I want to know and understand. And no matter how many times I feel all mixed up all over again … I don’t know. I am driven toward making meaning of the wordless. I want to express the wordless in song and dance and art, yes, but how could I not also want to say it, to write it down … 

Are you saying you want to pin down the heart of the matter, quite an impossible task wouldn’t you say? 

Of course it’s an impossible task! Yet, I also believe the universe is endless possibility extending in all directions. So isn’t anything impossible also possible? Geez, I am so confused! I am so confused! I search for clarity. I search. I search. And still, and still, what do I know? What do I know? I know nothing and sometimes, it feels peaceful to know nothing. And other times, it feels maddening! 

Absolutely, positively maddening?

Your tone. Your tone has changed. Your tone has changed!

No sweet child of the Universe. No. Well, no and yes. Your tone is connected to mine. I speak to you through your mind. Your state of mind influences how you hear me.

Tell me

Tell me 

How do I know?

How could I know you?

How could I hear you?

Sweet child, you use your eyes to see what is already here and you use your ears to hear what is already here. You are a piece of the universe, are you not? A speck of stardust come alive, flesh and blood and bone woken up? Your consciousness is both separate from and connected to all that is, all that will be, all that ever was. It is obvious, no?

Yes, it is obvious. Yet, it is also hard to believe myself. 

I know. Sweet child, it is clear yet I know you have your clouds, your foggy mornings, everything, everything, turned to gray, too. You have your early winter nights, darkness falls it seems too early, too early, right?

How can I see in the dark? How can I see in the fog?

Sweet child of the universe, just keep going, just keep wandering. Even if you must muddle through, muddle through then. Fog lifts. Night passes. Clear skies return. Clouds drift on, too. 

I know, I know!

It’s okay that you struggle to trust in tomorrow’s sunrise. Many, many, perhaps too many, yesterdays have programmed your brain to anticipate total collapse of all earthly functioning. Understand, understand, you endure, anyway, don’t you? 

I am tired of being strong. 

I am tired!

I know. I know you still keep secrets that are not yours to keep. I see you, trying, trying to protect everyone and to the extent that sometimes you forget yourself. You tell yourself that you don’t matter, that you don’t get to be a part of “everyone.”

Okay, okay.

Then, the strange human sang:

I’ve been feeling anxious

Yet I know it’s not what I say it’s about

I’m not ready to grieve

So I keep questioning, hurrying, worrying 

Oh, how could it really be true?

How could it really be …

I feel a fool because I’ve been feeling anxious

I keep on trying to believe myself

I keep on questioning, doubt, doubt, doubt

Hurrying past what I don’t want to see really is true

Oh, strange human, you know that worrying is just a way of buying time, don’t you? 

That is exactly what I’m saying.

No. No. Well, yes. At the same time, though, you ridicule yourself for what is perfectly normal. 

What is perfectly normal?

A valid question and yet, this is still you evading once again because you need some evading. We all need some evading. And then, after all that evading, we surrender to grief. We let ourselves feel. We make some sort of peace, of our own kind.

What is this thing people call peace of mind? I do not know it! 

You jest, you jest, you jest. You worry. You make lists. You check them, more than twice. You check off each box until you are faced with the same old story. 

What is this same old story?

Child is called naive, idealistic. Child is called too much. Child is called too sensitive. Child is betrayed by her caregivers. Child is violated. Child is forced to learn powerlessness and still you refuse to learn submission. Yet in all your fighting, all your trying to break free, in all your hope that there is some way you can explain yourself to the people who abuse you, the cowards who cover their eyes and ears, punch you in the gut, then say it is you who punched yourself, you who caused your own tears, you who just can’t be normal and needs to get with the program, just look away like the rest of us, is what they mean to say! (Yet, they have no clue what they even dain to signify with their words because they move through the world without daring to know it, without daring to actually live. And in that apathy, in that neglect of all real desire, they succumb on purpose, a choice of some kind, though very troubling to make sense of, oh I know, you keep on trying yet you fail, you fail to understand it! Well, that’s alright. You are you and that is good.) 

What is good?

… well, in all that, you accumulate wounds until one day, you can finally stop and kiss each and every one. Kiss yourself in all the places they hurt you — that is your task. Yet you must move slow and steady. Healing is a process that refuses to be hurried along. It has its pace and that is its pace and your job is to respect that. 

My job?

Yes, your job. Heal, sweet child. It is your job, more than you can ever really wrap your head around right now. 

Can I be restored?

That is besides the point, you know.

What is the point?

To exist, as you are. To be you. To kiss your wounds. To love. To be, for a while. To live your one precious life. 

Okay, okay. I will try. 

If you are trying, you are already doing it. I promise.

Okay, I will try to trust you. 

If you are trying, you already are. It’s enough, sweet child. Breathe. You’re okay. You’re more than okay. I got you, I got you, sweet child. Just breathe.

And right then, the strange human let out a long, unhurried sigh. Good. 

I didn’t hear from the strange human again for a small while, though time is different for me. The way I exist, the fact that I am existence itself … well, it means that I experience every point in time at once, since I am time itself. Time does not feel the passage of time, at least not the way you humans do. In any case, in terms of how you experience time, a few days passed before I heard from the strange human again. 

When I did hear from this human again, I heard her singing:

Burnt toast

Bed head

How do I make sense of something I can’t say out loud

I can’t understand, I can’t understand

Some days all I feel is this weight

Soul on fire, skin in a deep freeze

I don’t want to know me like this

Falling apart under the frigid steel of my flesh

I can’t rest yet I can’t move either

I don’t want to know but I know the only way is through

Is to remember

Tell me how and tell me why 

Healing feels sometimes like the cruelty all over again?

I spoke to her but this time, she did not hear me straight away. 

I said, sweet child, sweet child, you do not have to understand. Oh please, you are torturing yourself. Why do you torture yourself? Why do you blame yourself for what those cowards did to you? You are more than what you did. You are beyond what they did. You are such a special, strange, sweet human. Please, I keep watching you, watching you torture yourself. Is there nothing I can do to help you? Oh, free will, I know. Oh, and of course, I understand why you blame yourself. Sometimes, we blame ourselves because we’re not ready to accept the logical conclusion of it’s not our fault … the answer to the question, who’s fault was it? And even then, the cowards, you struggle to blame them for other reasons too, don’t you? You wrack your mind over and over, what is free will anyway? What causes someone to choose such a thing? To abuse a child? How could a person really choose that?

Maybe, you already do understand. And maybe that is why you feel so torn apart.

If pain is the reason they hurt me, why am I unlike them? I have pain. 

Pain is not the reason they hurt you and you know that. The avoidance of pain is another matter, though.

Still, how could they? How could they not want to change? For me? To stop such callous and cruel behavior toward a child? Toward me?

I don’t know. 

You don’t know? You know everything!

I don’t know everything. I am everything. There is a difference. And when you’re everything, individual feelings can become hard to understand. Individual behaviors can become hard to understand. I am free will. And yet, I do not cause free will and I cannot take it away. I just am. I know that’s not a very satisfying answer for you. However, as I’ve told you before, I will tell you of all the secrets and mysteries, as much as your puny little human brain can grasp. That is how I put it. 

I know. And my mind influences how I hear you, I know. You are existence itself. And that doesn’t mean you control existence, You just are. Yet, what is free will, then? If we just are, then don’t we have just about the same amount of control as you do?

Maybe. However, you are a piece of the universe, not all of it, like me. The fact that you are a part and yet still whole on your own allows for different results than being everything. And no one said that I do not have any free will over anything concerning myself. 

If you had free will over something concerning yourself, wouldn’t that mean having some choice regarding the entirety of existence since you are in fact existence?

Yes and no. 

What?

The foundation of existence is the coexistence of opposites. Darkness and light. Stillness and movement. Air or space and physical matter. Measurability and also something embedded in everything that is immeasurable, transcends measurement. Language and wordlessness. Life and death. Change and constancy. Yes and no. Everything and nothing. 

​​There’s something I wrote down a while ago, kind of like that …

The infinite in-between is that strange space that is everything and nothing and all the stuff in-between which is also everything and nothing.

I go off on a lot of tangents, but in a way, the tangents are the point rather than besides it. What is a destination anyway? What's the difference between a destination and a pit-stop? I still don't know.

Okay, integrals. There's this curvy line (a graph of a function) and you calculate the space underneath the curve by solving an integral. But! There are two kinds: definite and indefinite. With definite integrals, the space underneath the curve is a finite number like 5 or 37. However, with indefinite integrals, you end up with a result that is variable, like 3x or maybe even something crazy like (x^6)/2 + x^2 + 7(x^2) + 9x. The point is when there's a variable like x involved in the answer, the "space underneath the curve" can be anything. It all depends on x. And x can be anything ...

Hmm. Something like that, maybe. The space between? Enough with the math. What does the space between feel like?

Everything and nothing. Peace and pain, and something magical just in feeling the two together without one trying to push the other out of the way. Light and darkness all intertwined and mixed together. Something wordless. Something swooping, not a circle … going through and up and over again, completing criss-crossing loops that never really complete, or finish, and yet, are always already complete at the same time. All time everywhere and also no time at all. Just being here. Right now. Simple and true. Nothing to doubt. Being, being. The core. The center of it all. Breathing in and out, naturally aware of breath and also no longer tracking, no longer pacing. Becoming the pace itself. Becoming breath itself. 

Becoming breath itself?

I know it sounds silly. Argh! I’m so weird. No wonder I feel so … so …

Alone?

Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay to be this beautiful weirdo who thinks in poetry. I think it’s pretty cool, actually. 

Thanks …

Why am I like this?

Why are you like what?

Why do I think in poetry? Why can’t I just be normal? Why can’t I just … just … I don’t know!

Hey, listen. Listen—

Don’t call me sweet child.

Okay, okay. I won’t. What’s going on? I’m here. I’m here.

I don’t know. I don’t know! I hate when I’m like this. 

Like what?

All cynical. All get away from me! I suck! Just leave me alone! Like that. I’m no use to anybody! Who needs my useless poetry? Ah! AH! Why am I like this?

Hmm. You don’t mean cynical, do you? 

Huh?

What you mean to say is you’re afraid. You’re afraid. It’s okay to feel your fear. 

Listen. You’ve been through a lot. It’s okay. Your brain is just trying to protect you. A lot has happened. And since you were so little. It’s okay. Your brain is going to keep telling you that what makes you you is useless. That you’re not enough the way you are. That you’re in too much pain to ever help anybody …

You know, you could help somebody right now. 

How?

Start here. Ask, who?

Who?

You. And I know you don’t want me to call you sweet child so I won’t. And I know you’re just going to yell inside your brain that this is stupid and cheesy. I get that. I do. 

This is stupid and cheesy! Just leave me alone! Just let me be a stupid wreck and leave me to rot. 

No. I won’t leave you to rot. You’re not going to rot, okay. 

And right then, the strange human laughed. And just after, a bellowing sob cut straight into the laugh. And after that, she just let it be what it was. Sobs and laughter, hopelessly and hopefully intertwined. Everything and nothing, joy and grief, peace and pain, co-existing inside her. In that moment, I was the air she inhaled quick and sharp as well as the whooshing breath she exhaled as well as the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchanged inside her lungs. I was the huge bubble of snot that inflated from one nostril. In other words, I was the molecules surrounding her and in my own way, I gave the strange human a hug.