The pilgrim
Maybe it was the leaf that was the pilgrim – showing up from long ago to now, and the now leaf mirroring back to the one from long ago.
LETTERS
A text exchange between me and my dear college friend in mid-August 2021:
Bell: “Found those letters again from your time in Kyoto. Each letter has a leaf! I am purging my office happy to share or discard.”
Me: “omg, bell! i‘m almost afraid to know what i wrote. love the leaves!! even then, look at that 🌿🍃
can you mail the letters to me if you don‘t want them? somehow maybe i need to see them, even if i‘m not ready to read them.”
And when the two letters arrived. Holding them in my hands, the heavily creased and translucent crinkly airmail paper and envelope, I almost couldn‘t believe it. The two leaves, brown and flattened, were firm and with barely a chip.
What did I write about? Who was I then and would I still recognize the 24 year old young woman who wrote on those pages? And what if I didn‘t, would that matter? It was nearly three decades ago. Much had changed.
It was my first time living abroad – Japan, 1992. I loved it there. There was so much to love. And I fell in love. I wrote about how nature healed and offered wisdom to me even then; about how simple experiences in the moment were also profound, and the longing for something more was fierce.
Though we are different, the young woman then is also with me now. We would recognize each other.
WRITINGS
From time to time, I browse through David Whyte's book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, and read what catches my attention.
The synchronicity, the connections of what I read and what I had written so long ago began to weave together...
DESTINY
“Strangely, every person always lives out their destiny no matter what they do, according to the way they shape the conversation... It is still our destiny, our life, but the sense of satisfaction involved and the possibility of fulfilling its promise may depend upon a brave participation, a willingness to hazard ourselves in a difficult world, a certain form of wild generosity with our gifts; a familiarity with our own depth, or own discovered, surprising breadth and always, a long practiced and robust vulnerability equal to what any future may offer.”
What I wrote in the letter, early October 1992:
“This is just the beginning - this a far cry from stopping in my journeys. If I sit still in one place I go crazy. There's too much out there, there’s too much in me to wish for something so basic and boring as the typical “American Life”. I can’t do it. I fancy the idea of living in another country, again and again and again. If I can, nothing can stop me. I don’t want anything or anyone to ever pull me away from my goals - my purpose - something more in life.”
MEMORY
“Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a waveform, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now.”
What I wrote in the letter, early June 1992:
”My wonderful morning at Honen-in Temple.... I found my favorite spot by the pond... a thought came to me ”What do you want?“ I laughed... Just then I noticed my 7th or 8th spiderweb in the past few weeks. This one was by far the most grand, most spectacular, most fantastic spiderweb I saw - EVER! It was huge! It stretched from one tree branch to the other tree branch to the bush near where I was sitting. A fantastic triangular maze... That!!!! I want that! I want to create that - with the same capacity, enthusiasm, and determination to surpass my own expectations. That spiderweb symbolized everything for me. Nothing is impossible... My artwork... I want to be as the spiderweb symbolizes! Only reaching beyond, seeking beyond, stretching far, creating a life of delicate mazes...”
PILGRIM
“We are made... pilgrims on the astonishing, never to be repeated journey by combining the precious memory of the then with the astonishing, but taken for granted experience of the now, and both with the unbelievable, and hardly possible just about to happen.”
What I wrote in the letter, early June 1992:
“It’s not like anything major has happened since I last wrote – I still have the same job, the same daily schedule, the things I do in my spare time are the same. But I always experience something new. Every day something new happens, or a neat moment that I realize something. These small simple, cherished moments are what make me happy. This, I realize, more and more.”
Perhaps I’ve always been a pilgrim traversing the inner landscape of myself. A pilgrim embarking on a long journey that was my destiny, all along – still cherishing simple moments, still seeking and longing for something beyond, still finding wisdom and solace in nature. The memory of then is also now.
And maybe it’s the leaf that’s the pilgrim, too – showing up from long ago to now, and the now leaf mirroring back to the one from long ago. Yes, they would recognize each other...
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