WORDS AND FRUIT TREES
Rebirth is the word on my tongue.
On this cloud covered early June morning, it effortlessly flows from mind to mouth out loud as I fly transit in my car down the highway.
I consider this process of death that is bound to birth— the dissolving, a decomposition of becoming, something entirely new from what was.
My daughter asks me, “Mom, are you still growing?”
What is happening, in me?
“Well, I am like a piece of fruit, I am ripening.”
I find this metaphor absolutely delicious. I can see my skin glowing orange and sun kissed, juicy, sweet. My heart, a fully formed seed in the center. Let me soften and I will feed you. Pit fruit—I am definitely a peach, and I am also the tree, the roots, the leaves, the bark and unseen cambium.
I have been sitting in darkness, processes and transitions, internal and slowly—forming new season buds. Lately, I have had few words, and for someone whose medium is language, I have felt a regular disorientation in not being able to express verbally, but words have been feeling like illusions, figments of imagination compared to the embodied tangibility that is moving within me. And do you know what this has brought out? Primal sounds, moans, cries, belly laughter, deep sighs. Primal movement, running through forests, dancing, orgasms, bathing in rain.
Here in the northern hemisphere we are nearing the summer solstice, while the southern half of this circle we live within is preparing to enter the threshold of winter. The juxtaposition of two halves as one whole moving through time in different realities simultaneously— is just begging for continued acceptance of the polarity of perception. When I acknowledge what another sees— and understand that reality is deep and wide and circular and layered and, how do we know? We know from experience. We know from depths of hidden knowledge stored in bones and blood and tissue, we know without knowing and we don’t know at all. What we say is only a reflection, so how do we live closer to what is foundational? How do we bury ourselves within the soil of our own being and root and grow from this ground? How do we stop talking and bear fruit?
Welcome to Substack, Hannah!
I feel this rebirth also, but what are we being reborn into? Perhaps we cannot really know.
"When I acknowledge what another sees— and understand that reality is deep and wide and circular and layered and, how do we know?"
I can relate to this, and when we relax our perspectives and convictions - or find them shattered by cognitive dissonance - it can feel like a loss. If I cannot rely on what I believed to be true, then how can I really know anything?
But...as you say...there is experience. We are embodied beings. And we are surrounded by embodied beings - flowers, trees, birds - on a planet built of living, dynamic systems. And that is a common experience, one not defined by religion or philosophy or politics. And from this foundational level arises a deeper truth, one that has the potential to bridge our divides and bring an end to the separation that is at the root of fear and violence and isolation.
I look forward to following your journey of rebirthing and ripening!