The stick less traveled
A letter to John after some time.
"It’s been kind of upsy-downsy for me lately. But I awakened this a.m. Sun June 28 feeling clearer and with a strong residue of a dream. I’d been walking in the woods and my attention was drawn to a broken branch on the ground. I turned and opened my hand and the stick shivered once or twice, then picked itself up off the ground, rather elegantly I would say, and floated up to be gripped at one end in my hand, as if to ask, "shall I tell you which way to go, or will you tell me?” Either way there was a sense of peace about it, the sense that we are not alone. That we’re in this together." - John
I had another letter prepared for you in response. It was about the spirit of objects and enchantment, how there was a time when all objects were more than the material they were made of. It is hard to find them now, but if you look, you can occasionally see an object that speaks out to you.
But this was the last letter you sent. You died before I could respond. It wasn't completely unexpected, but these things never are, are they?
You took many paths, and some of them we took together. Your dream reminded me of a time when I visited you in a forest in Oregon. Often when we would visit you would suggest that we go for a walk. It was a time to talk and, I suspect, to get out of the confines of the houses you found yourself in. Your place was never inside. Your rooms were sparse with books, candles, a circle, a cloth, and here and there a mask.
When we walked, I would try to share what I had seen in my dreams. The surfaces of the spirit world was a place that I was comfortable going with you. That world has always been a place I have traveled, albeit as a reluctant guide. We never hiked. We talked on foot, mainly dabbling in dragons, witches, signs, and, of course, puns. The words led our paths, floating out in front just long enough for us to consider what they were before they drifted off like mist through the ferns.
On this walk, I was looking for a stick. Or the idea to look for a stick came to mind. I am not sure which came first. I needed something for a project I was working on. Furniture for school. I was making a box (or an ark, if you pushed me) and needed two pieces of maple that I could carve into handles. I wasn't going to make handles! I was going to get two long poles so that you needed someone else to carry the load. It was an ark you see and not a box.
I leapt off the path and found two vine maples that looked right. You waited as I cut them off carefully, and you helped haul them back to my car. When I returned to my studio, I would spend hours carefully stripping the bark off. If you get it just right, you can peel away the protective bark on the outside and expose a perfectly smooth layer of wood right above the vessels that feed the tree. The wood there is perfect and white, like bone. Press too much and you expose the veins. Pull too little and the bark remains, rough and lizard-like.
I spent the next two weeks laboriously getting it just right. My professor marveled. This should not be possible. This should have split. I was told it was a silly idea to try but dammit, you got lucky.
You were always walking. You traveled far. People forget that you hitchhiked around the Mediterranean. You projected in meditations, and sometimes we did that together while you let me move forward saying simply, go that way and tell me about it.
So where did you go this time? Did that stick guide you, or did you tell it where to lead you? Go that way and tell me about it someday.