Common Treasures: novembro 2014

I haven’t seen the old giant oak since the end of August. It was radiantly covered with green leaves and many nuts were beginning to grow. I don’t need to see him to know how it is now. It is almost completely naked, some branches were broken by the harsh wind and the pouring rains. The whistling of the wind sounds very different now when it passes through the nude branches. In the sunny days the drops of water will shine on the thinner branches and fall in slow motion over the new soft grass. Mushrooms are probably growing under and around him… if the dogs didn´t eat them yet or the neighbor didn´t smash them when he passes through our yard to his vineyard on the other side. I bet some frogs made their home again among the pruned grapevine branches that are still on the flat low rock by his side. Last Christmas I grabbed, without noticing, a frog… it was night and I was gathering some firewood… I only noticed when he jumped from my hand. It was a big one… and I didn’t scream as I would have done when I was ten… He just didn’t want to be grabbed and he went away peacefully… None of those stories of ejecting poisonous saliva… I didn’t feel any allergy… Either he was really a friendly frog or all those stories are only superstition… After all, this isn’t Amazonia where the poisonous saliva of some frogs is really used by the shamans as a medicine…
All the times and seasons join under that old oak. It´s easy to see us there in Summer when we were ten… And when we were twenty, and even thirty and forty… then you went away. But you’re still there… You are ten, twenty, thirty, forty under the old oak. Near the “sand mountain” (a mound of sand with only 1,5 m) there was a big barrel turned into a secret refuge. It was old, empty and smelled terribly like wine. It was impossible to remain inside for more than ten minutes, even with the “door” opened or we would get dizzy. So the old barrel became a secret refuge mainly inside our minds. Laying under the old oak we would look to our secret refuge and imagine it was plenty of different things… A flying house travelling upon the clouds, a boat navigating in a blue sea, a door to enter into many worlds… or just one less barrel that you wouldn’t have to clean before receiving the new wine. That was a bad time for you. You were small enough to enter by those narrow “doors” and inside it was black, slimy, sticky and that unbearable strong smell… I was lucky, I was a girl, so father never obliged me to do that task.
Looking above through the branches of the old oak, we would see the barrel-house, the barrel-boat, the doors to everywhere and other endless visions. And without a single step or even without “flying” in the swing father arranged on the stronger branch, without jumping to the sand mountain or running around with arms opened to catch the wind, there we’d go just the same, free birds without frontiers in our minds. What great voyagers we were! And we still are, each one in our own way… We see and create “metangible landscapes” everywhere…
Sometimes I wonder if everything would have been the same if the old oak wasn’t there. He was really essential and still is. It was there much before us… now is probably around 150 years old… and it will be there. The plants and creatures around will come and go but he will be there. I just hope there’s someone to take care of him… Or perhaps it’s always him that takes care, silently, without demanding special attention or reward… Oh, but we always paid lots of attention to him and our reward was simply sharing our dreams with him. He knows them all even those that I had completely forgotten. I lean my head against his trunk and hear his voice inside… it’s the voice of our souls. This is really a special old oak… in his veins run rivers of dreams constantly flowing to an endless sea. That’s why I find him always by the sea… though he never took a step out of that mountain spot. He wants to keep closer to your beloved stars. Well, I see stars raining from his branches when I find him by the sea… He’s a great traveler too… I bet you find him often among the stars…