Like roots, so deep.
The morning sun softly touched the mountainside treetops, swabbing the heavy raindrops of the past dark days away. Like translucent silk curtains, they dissipated into the air, becoming a fading memory of the past. A wall of fog whispering of old days before journeying into the heavens to amplify a distant land with the heavy tide of their life-giving revitalization.
With the heavy clouds gone, he passes into their assurgent fog, visiting their insulating veil for a moment of peaceful quietness. The early hours left the otherwise crowded path through the forest in a silence brimming with life. Today’s reading in a firm grip, his mind and spirit filled with elate expectation of the seeds they would receive soon. After opening the pages, the last dark clouds volatilize under the intense summer sun. With the last remnants of yesterday’s darkness finally gone, he started his journey into the depths of the forest, always keeping one eye on the route his antecedent took. Seneca by name.
He followed the trail up the mountain to find the guiding title’s meaning: What is a good life? With the rising sun lightening his path, he made a good pace. Looking back once in a while, he saw the steep ascent already completed.
---
The forest, denser and denser.
No path. No light.
Just thorns. Breathless noise.
He paused. Or fell.
He didn’t know.
Summit? —
Gone.
A leaving sun—
Never to return?
Darkness.
Forgotten memories.
Frantic glances.
Lost path.
Searching for shelter.
As whipping branches struck.
Thorns torturing skin.
Torturing flesh.
Impressions.
Scars.
Never to heal.
Listless ... heaviness.
Darkness.
Lifelessness.
But a breeze.
Like caressing silk.
Telling a way... fondling the pain.
Strengthening anguish, as moments pass by.
Lighter and lighter, as ease found its way.
---
Still hand grabbing thorns.
As blood’s running warm.
And second by second, more gone seems harm.
A breeze becomes stillness, as silk becomes stone.
Hands worn and bloody, now can’t feel thorns.
Tears shed are falling, soon hitting the ground.
Purling in calmness, as emotions now sort.
Hands bloody shaking, steady become.
As a cry fills the forest, telling suffering is gone.
---
While falling on his rear, his eyes fixed on his hands, as well as the puddles of tears. But where once an ocean of torment was to be found, now a universe of appreciation began to form. And as he not examined, but understood the beauty of his salty products, his hands immersed in the once cold, but now slowly growing enliven world.
Finding the universe, he created deeper than he could possibly imagined, his hands got hold of the thread running through the universe of his. Not new in presence, but new in life, he for the first time felt it as the root it was. No longer shriven up by a darkness lurking within but pulsating by the life the universe of tears created. And from the root, an ancient tree arose.
That’s when he realized the anticipated storm did not come, with the clouds giving way to the sun once more.
Sunrays made their way through the long-lived green crown of his new master, teaching him not the lecture of how to live a good life. For its beauty grew not only from life. While ancient, the sage of the forest was not eternal. And whenever he came to be, he came from others. Being the descendant of those before, but the progenitor of those to come. And while his life prepared this glade of calmness for those that followed, only his passing would give way to the sunlit space his mighty crown created.
So, the traveller loosened his grip, finding an unprecedented strong footing. Finally on his path, he made his way back to the people out there for a guide towards the glade of calmness he became.