How You See The Fullness of My Being
I led her by her hands into the garden I have become. I had no idea
why she wanted to see it– I knew the garden by heart, and there was
nothing beautiful in it.
First, I took her to a flower patch near the edge of the garden. An
ill tended patch of nameless, withering flowers. I thought she’d lose
interest, so we can quickly get out of the garden. But she looked at
it, and said, quietly, “it’s beautiful”.
“Right…” I rolled my eyes, and looked at the sorry flower patch with
some contempt. To my surprise, I saw it exploding with colours! Pink
roses, red roses, white poppies, red tulips, marigolds, and magolias
of splendid beauty. I didn’t know all these flowers grew together.
“Show me more,” she said.
So I took her a little deeper into the garden. We stopped in front of
two giant trees. One was upside down, its roots extended into the sky,
extracting nourishment from whatever little moisture there was in the
air, and its foliage buried deep into the ground, depriving itself of
light. The other was missing half its trunk, so its floating foliage
shriveled because its roots couldn’t provide any nourishment for its
thriving.
“Sorry, these trees are a bit… awkward,” I apologized, with a bit
awkwardness, “I might have planted one of the seedlings upside down.
And I forgot to water them for some years when they grew.” She looked
at the trees, and found herself puzzled. “They look perfectly normal
to me,” she said. I looked at the trees again, and sure enough, they
were upright, complete, and bursting with health.
“Show me more,” she said.
My head was spinning a little. “Are you sure?” I asked.
“Show me more,” she said.
So we walked together, deeper into the garden. We came before an abyss
we had to cross. Only a rickety bridge spanned over the yawning
darkness. “Please, PLEASE do not look down into the darkness,” I
begged her before we crossed the bridge. I held her hand, and she
chose to close her eyes, as I led her over the abyss, so she saw
nothing of its darkness– all she felt was the moistness in my hand,
its trembling, and its warmth.
So she opened her eyes again, and smiled at me. I saw the grass on
both sides of the abyss grew and grew, covering over its bottomless
depth.
“Let’s keep going,” I said.
So we passed by a tree bearing glowing orange fruits. She asked me
what they were. I told her that the tree feeds on my hopes. The fruit
tastes like sunshine, but the seeds are incredibly bitter. She stood
on her tiptoe and strained for a fruit. She picked the biggest she
could reach. I took over the fruit, splitted it open, and tried to
remove its seeds the best I could. But the seeds were tiny and
transparent, so I missed a few.
When the fruit touched her lips, I’d swear that it glowed a little
brighter. It was probably my imagination playing tricks on my mind.
She said she didn’t taste any bitterness. The seeds, she said, tasted
like almonds. That’s impossible, because the seeds, as I said, are
incredibly bitter. It must have been her imagination playing tricks on
her mind.
We sat under that tree for a long time. When we were rested and ready
to leave, the rotting fruits on the ground came alive, and imbued the
air with a drunken aroma full of life.
“Let’s keep going,” I said.
So I decided to take her to the place where I define myself. To get
there, we must pass through a narrow passage that had clocks growing
on the cliff walls.
Even at some distance from the entrance, I could hear the cacophony of
grandfather clocks chiming, cuckoo clocks chirpping, digital clocks
beeping, analog clocks ticking. Each clock marked a different time.
There was one that counted down to the time of my death, one that
chimed each time I ate a grape, another that ticked with my heart, yet
another to my sense of her breathing, and so on.
I hated going through the passage. I never could make sense of
anything with the thousands of clocks drowning out my thoughts in
total noise.
I entered the passage with some reluctance. But the moment we stepped
across the threshold, the clocks, thousands of clocks, swung in synch
in an instant, tick-tick-ticking in perfect rhythm. And as we went
deeper and deeper into the passage, the ticking became slower and
slower. At the end of the passage, in front of a cave, it stopped.
“Let’s keep going,” I said.
So we were surrounded by complete silence in the cave, except the
echoes of our footsteps and breathing. What I wanted to show her, was
a shrub about waist high. Each of its leaves a mirror that reflected
myself in a different perspective, and with a different distortion. I
often went into the cave to examine its leaves, and each time, I’d
find new pieces of my complete self.
I brought her to where the shrub was, and lit the torches I had around
it, so that the shurb was engulfed within the flames of its self
reflected light. This was so she could see the fullness of my being.
She looked into the shrub and gasped,
“This is me! More beautiful than I had ever known!”
