Common Treasures: BECOMING THE PATH

They were there, the swallows from the South, other South some degrees below our South. They and dozens of other birds, joyful butterflies, dedicated bees, galloping plants, blooming trees, travelling clouds and a warm welcoming sun. Year by year, season by season, without anyone to clean and tame constantly the wild, everything that is purely natural advances and occupies your absence and even mine.

This Spring the birds were more diverse and more colorful, from black to rainbow birds, and their chants and conversations were filling the air. Just like the plants they are also multiplying and occupying new territories. The whole jungle was seething with life. For five days I worked with all my dedication and energy, cleaning the space in my own way, a very selective cleaning. People who come around say “That is just a wild plant, pluck it or you’ll have hundreds like that soon!” But I can’t do it. I tell them “It’s precisely because it’s wild that must remain there. Besides, did you already notice how beautiful it is?” It’s good to meet them, time after time. I don’t want to keep them just in images; I want the real ones there.

In the beginning, it was tremendously hard this task of being the “last butterfly” and do everything that has to be done. I know I’m not the last, even if there were no more butterflies. When a home becomes empty of physical presences, everything seems the last. Now I take my time and do my best, without stopping being a butterfly, a bird, a plant… among equals. I give space to the wild and the wild pays me back with all its beauty and life. Cleaning absolutely everything would be like creating a civilized desert in the heart of a simple true paradise. I know that to avoid the claws of the law some things must be sacrificed, but always maintaining some balance and harmony. That’s why when I cut some wild plants I always make sure that some of the same kind remain there. The big problem is the tiny ones. I crawl on the ground, I observe as a silly botanist, I compare, look from multiply perspectives in different moments of the day, under different lights and find infinite universes in each inch, even with my bad bare eyes. After such an experience, I try to walk even more smoothly over their unnoticed realms.

Sometimes my daughter asks “Mother, are you walking in that funny way?” And I tell her “Because there are many wonders under my feet and all around me!” And I show her the red lichens that form amazing red carpets, the white tiny flowers that grow under the pine trees whose petals seem made of translucent paper and tulle, the drops of life blood in many colours, the tiny mushrooms that grow in the oaks leaves, the spiral tendrils embracing the other plants or seeking safe ground, the reflections in the furry cocoons of the gorses’ seeds, the immense diversity of tiny and big plants, lichens, flowers, leaves, fruits, birds, insects, stones, clouds, shapes, colours, smells, textures, presences… Well, since she has much more time to observe than me, sometimes she comes to tell me about some new discovery, even when she inside the house. One day she told me that a big colorful bird was on the window sill pecking the window glass insistently, as if it was calling her attention from the outside. She came near from inside, she touched the window glass and the bird remained there, pecking from the outside… She said it seemed a woodpecker, it had a long beak and a crest, but I doubt because woodpeckers aren’t so colorful and usually don’t peck on glass but in the trees’ trunks.

Back to the city, I found another surprise over my garage gate. A second swallow’s nest was being built and now is complete. Now I have two families of swallows in my building. What a privilege, my brother! You would love them! How many swallows’ nests do you have in your star-home? I can see a million from here. They are collecting shiny tiny stones from the heart of the stars. There they come, rolling along till they meet me in this corner of the rainbow by the sea. I have two in my hands now, but probably they are just two halves of the same star heart.

ROLLING STARS

Long, long, long ago
From the heart of each star
A tiny stone fell in the blackness of the cosmos
Each one fell in a different way into a different
Invisible long road
That wasn’t yet a path
And invisible it stood
Until, here and there, from the heart
From this and that stone
Shiny dust and crystalline drops began to fall.
One by one they gathered
Along the unknown shadow line
And traced the beginning of a path.
From that moment on
The tiny stones began to shine
Like the stars were they were born
Atom by atom, ray by ray
Until they became only light and transparency
Seeds of new stars growing from inside.

Each stone has its paths
Within the path of life and time
But there’s only one path for each soul
The one built with the matter of the soul itself.
The ground of the long road is always fertile
Even when is made just of rocks and sand.
This and that tiny stone had gardener souls
So the road, step by step,
After the sweat, blood and tears
The search, the dream, the creation
Became the garden, the forest,
The earth, the galaxy, the universe
As tiny as their size, as huge as their souls.

And while I sit here
In this corner of the rainbow by the sea
I hear the story of their long journey
In the whispering of the waves
In the chant of the free birds
In the new blooming of the old and new trees
All of them, rolling stars,
On their path of becoming
What they are and will be…
When I look, I see
Not the stones but stars
Sometimes one, sometimes two
Just one path, the same light entangled
I stand up, I follow the shiny road
A star in each hand showing the way
I join my hands, I join the stars
Which is which, I don’t know
The path they follow is within me
And I find myself becoming the path within…

São Ludovino, 15/4/2015 – 2:47