If the Oak Could Speak

Nearly collapsed, half diminished, about twenty shades of orange and brown, the Brightsoul Barn stood a survivor longer than I had been alive. Plans to remodel had fallen apart in the past few weeks, just as the fate of this old richly lived gem would soon follow. I was frustrated; I felt as defeated as I was when we moved in with his parents, months after graduation. But we had a plan B. These antique planks of oak would not be wasted. And neither would our golden opportunity.

Yes, we were in need of a place to inhabit. Running out of options and funds to pay our own rent, the Brightsoul Barn stood as a lighthouse to our distraught minds and wallets. But the bones of this structure were tired and weary, in need of a new purpose.

As stubborn as I was with plans, I felt empathy for both this old barn and my partner's attempts at foraging a new path for us. We needed to start from square one.

My feet crunched the dead leaves as I walked through the sunlit haven, once housing tobacco hung to dry, occasionally housing a game of hide and seek, sometimes just providing a quiet escape to read and dream. These beams would soon be coffee tables, dressers, rocking chairs and coat racks, pieces my husband could fashion and finish to sell.

I unhooked the last of the iridescent chimes from outside the doors, pausing to wonder what the ancient trees that this barn was constructed of had lived through, what secrets were held in their layers and grooves.

Resting in the hammock I started to drift into an afternoon snooze, followed by a dreamscape seamlessly melting into my humid, late summer reality:

My trains of thought began to disperse. Floating through tobacco clouded skies, along the breeze, body weightless. I swam through a sea of fog, landing in the field, the landscape vaguely resembling the meadows around the old Brightsoul property.

It was a lovely spring sight: greenery glistening with dew, birds cluttering the sound waves in the air with colorful melodies phasing in and out of each other. I closed my eyes in bliss and opened them again to find myself sitting under a large oak tree.

"Hi my dear, take yourself a break in my shade." The tree spoke to me, filling my molecules with nostalgia and comfort.

The branches swayed lightly above me as the sun rose over the tobacco fields in the distance. The daffodils captured my attention, looking more vivid than I had ever noticed a daffodil to be.

I gazed back at the tree as it spoke to me in a resounding rhythm. "It's so nice to be here with you today. I don't often have an ear to listen to me."

I laughed, "I usually have a lot to say, but I'd rather listen in this moment to be honest, I don't often converse with a tree!" I breathed in the aromas of the land deeply and began to sway with the oak.

"May I ask, how do you stay sane standing in the same place? Do you ever have the urge to travel and explore with the wind? I feel a bit too stuck on the ground sometimes, I don't know that I could ever be a tree in another life."

The oak swelled with a vibrant aura, excited by the question, and pondered. We watched as a pair of Japanese dragonflies zoomed around us, entangled in a conversation of their own.

"My dear, I have had this life of a tree, so that I could learn to be comfortable in stillness. To be comfortable in things I cannot control. To meditate by watching the life around me surround me with movement. It has done me well." The tree replied compassionately. "I am still and content, and I also know the farmer's plan. I will be a beautiful barn by next month. My life moves on in that way."

"Oh I see." I contemplated, as the daffodils began to change in size and shape before my eyes, animated and playfully. "So, it's the circle of life; I understand. I admire the way you are at peace with it. I still struggle with the changes, or lack thereof, if you know what I mean."

I spotted a faint image of the rising moon to the east. The sky swirled like rainbow colored oil puddles as the sun splattered ultraviolet rays into the atmosphere. I started to float above the ground as I became lost in the patterns of clouds and light, head in the sky while losing my grounding, a noticeable skill of mine.

"What worries you, dear one?" The tree said to me, almost seeming to know exactly what I would say next:

"Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm afraid that we are going to fail again. We're in the same position, again. We should have figured it out by now. If I don't follow a line, I'll follow a circle; an infinite set of positions I'll continue to follow and I'll forever be the same girl I was when I first arrived in this place. I want to move, I want to expand my journey, my career, my growth! I want to be as fluid as the daffodils and evening clouds."

"Dear child, life is not just as a circle, you should think of it more as a spiral. From one point of perspective, yes you see the circle. But because we can experience the passage of time, a linear path within the mandalas of reality, life becomes a spiral shape in movement. Always on a new spot of the coil, though the structure looks the same. You are not stuck, you've just been here before, same angle to the sun, but you must remember the whole galaxy has changed and moved too. You are a different person this time, and what will follow will be different. It will be significant; it will be new."

I hadn't thought like this before. I, an astronaut, of any space and time I enter, I've changed, my atoms rearranged and new. My vision widened by my peripherals and my mind opened beyond my obstacle to another direction of travel. I had already reached my next destination, or at least I had in my dream.

Multi-dimensional geometric mandalas danced and breathed in circular motions before me, mesmerizing my vision before fading into the meditative background of this glorious tree and her lecture once more.

Then, we sat in silence. We watched the sunset disappear and the insects began to chatter. Maybe I could find the peace of this moment when I returned to my day, the subconscious thought crept in.

I was challenged by a wise oak behind my eyelids of iron, now grasping at the words we exchanged through shifting layers of consciousness, in hopes of remembering once I fully awoke.

"Anne, wake up hun!"

David stood before me, exhausted from the day of work on the barn. And I smiled a kind, yet mischievous smile, a little less stubborn than when I had fallen into my dream.

I decided now to be more like the oak, and to take what it could give us with more positive energy, and patience, and let its journey move on. Just as our journey would. Around the ever adapting and expanding spiral.