Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Reminiscing

March 2nd, 2007 I wrote the following in a little black notebook:

"Two deer in the garden this morning.
Dad found the troll ear again.

In terms of ickle things this certainly has been a good day. A very good day, indeed.

The tiny gestures of life.
Life holding out its hand, inviting one...

All could be so wonderful - is, I suppose. Yet, at times it becomes hard to recognise or see.

Focus gets blurry, the lense milky.
Tired pupils from all too much insanity and ugliness manmade.

If we could just leave all this behind and out and concentrate on the vital issue of things that truly matter.
And it certainly is not a matter of definition what vital or true may be!

I saw a young couple today; her left hand was bound and his right.
I wondered what might have happened to them.
Maybe they bumped into something while they were holding hands, looking into each other's eyes?"

P.S. as to the troll ear: 
It was Christmas 2006, my dad and I had gone out into the woods to gather branches, moss, and fallen leaves, holly and ivy, rosehip, all sorts of things.  It is a family tradition that every year under the Christmas tree or near by it one of us would created a landscape in which Mary and Joseph hold Baby Jesus, across which the shepherds guide their flocks and across which also - although in the far distance - the Three Kings can be seen making their way slowly towards the manger.
For the creation of such landscape - which could be rather elaborate - you needed "material" which we either found in our garden or if we had more time and bigger plans, in the woods outside of town.
That year, my dad and I took our time carefully testing whatever we found in nature for use-ability in our grand scheme.
We had several baskets already full and were now looking for moss to be cut at the very last moment so it would last longer. There was moss growing on the bark of trees. There was moss covering the ground. There was plenty to go around. My father had begun to collect tree bark that had fallen off while I was busy gathering moss when, I don't remember who saw them first, we discovered tiny mushrooms growing around the feet of the trees. Some of them had spread out like the moss and crept up along the bark. 
They had funny shapes and looked a little like Shitake mushrooms to be honest. There was one on a tree trunk that resembled a tiny tiny ear. Not a human ear but the ear of a magic creature... After all, we were deep in the woods. 
No sounds, just the dripping of raindrops and our breathing - clearly, magic was in the air.
We took the "ear" with us. We told no one. But it was understood that WAS a troll's ear.
My dad carefully put it in a little air-tight container, labelled it like some kind of science project which always made me laugh. But somehow he misplaced it after Christmas and it was only that second day in March that he found it again.
I had called that day to tell him of the deer and how their silent grace, their elegance moved me so much that morning. I knew only he could fully appreciate that. 
And we both laughed at the lost and found troll's ear.

Only now I fully realise how behind so many things we say daily, we jot down, we let out carelessly, there is always a little story. A little something that makes it right, that places it neatly into the fabric of our lives and maybe that of others', too.

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