~ Why plant seeds?
To observe growth.
To convey an intention.
To sire a legacy.
To imbue the realm with something rather than nothing.
To fill the forest.
I wish to fill my forest. I am constantly planting seeds. Across as many facets as I can manage, upon the fertile grounds of hopeful imagination, of introspection, of intimacy — there are ideas sowed across the digital landscape I oversee here. Planned and necessary changes begin within my mental and physical spaces. To no particular end, I intend to see it through as far I can go. Today’s thoughts become tomorrow’s domain. Hold the tiny seedlings, but envision the mighty trees.
What do I speak of? Writing, creation, making — in all its forms and methods, inputs and outputs. What you put to page, but also what you speak into the air, the attitude you dwell within everyday. You plant seeds in the fields of your purview — past and future, known and unknown. In these spaces, there’s performance in your breath and consequences in your silence.
But it’s something more. This imagined forest I speak of, it’s personal and it requires something integral from us. In order to survive, it garners a level of attention be paid to it. One way or another, the land must be cultivated. And it must be done by the hands of the one responsible for the tending, the one with everything to lose upon the land falling into disrepair. This should seem obvious. This is your forest, so own it. Its growth or quiescence is your responsibility.
I find myself continuing to come back to this motif / theme / symbol of ‘the forest.’ It’s special to me, meaningful in ways I try to articulate. A forest is full of trees. Trees are harbingers of life, in all the seen and unseen methods they employ. There is providence amongst their collective, a dutifully designed decay within their roots, peace under their shade. The trees give context to the forest. Their presence constitutes definition into which the cycles ride into perpetuity. The forest is a simple, public good. It’s a mythical place you can actually go, mystical in all the possible ways we might imagine and tell stories about.
This idea of filling the forest has come to me concerning my writing, and beyond. At the end of the day, we all want to craft some sort of legacy. We are doing it everyday with interactions and inactions, our steady or manic performance in what we find to be the plane of our present reality.
Along the way, what are we building, what kind of seeds are we planting? How are we choosing to intersect with the world and cultivate it? Are we trying to leave it better than we found it? The ground we inhabit will become the forest, surrounded by the fruition of the ideas we have planted long ago. Are we rational actors within this process? Or are we unconsciously along for the ride, the character of these seeds being planted unbeknownst to us until the day arrives when the trees towers over us in all their glory or all their horror?
I aim to be conscious of this landscape and the things I grow here. It’s not hard to contemplate the future-forest I entreat with my steps. The stories I write, the ideals I try my hand at conveying, the absurd tapestries of experience I am continually composing. The musings on what I value and what I am concerned about make up the coming canopy overhead. Each has its place here in my arborous acropolis. Of course, from my perspective, this garden of mine being tended is woefully incomplete, even incoherent and incompetent in some areas. This makes me all the more conscientious of the work to be done.
I hope to grow myself here, alongside any creations I manage to behold and imbue into the soil. For my future self, for any of my companions past / present / future, for wandering strangers — there will be something here to experience. A pathway to walk upon and observe the prior presence of one trying to express oneself. Standing among trees formerly seeds in one’s mind, there is something salient to consider standing before their attempted articulation. There is a progression of ideas to behold, flaws to consider, a wayward experience of losing and finding, cyclically wayfaring over the consistent imperfection of life brought forth from the ether.
In the end, the forest is filled and shared. For anyone venturing without, there is only one place they can ever return. I hope they return with at least an atom of illuminating light, from the sights & sounds of a memory worth having, reeling with a reverie of something among my forest to be taken back and planted within their own. ~
Thresholds of Transformation 