About time

"Why should I of all people believe in the words of the Buddha? Why should I follow his teachings? There is no peace, no occasional rest, no respite.  I have seen things but they are in the past so what is the point in searching for justice? We are all in constant crisis." 

These are some things I said, they are things I may have meant at the time. Now I'm not so sure. I'm not even sure if I ever said them. It may be that you said them all along, throwing your voice, closing out my thoughts with some bombastic forces that I couldn't counter. I may have been weak. You cannot hang a man for that.

I wasn't sure what was really going on. I was unsighted for a moment. It was all a bit chaotic. I could however sense the disapproval. We had crossed some kind of line, broken away, travelled through. There was a new space and place before. Perhaps there was a breach in the space/time continuum anyway. I'll probably never know. All I can recall was that her nose seemed to grow, her features became sharper and the grasp of her hand stronger. I read later in a lengthy footnote that this kind of thing was to be expected. I did feel judged however.

So those great blocks of concrete closed in around us. The daylight became a precious thing. The size and the bulk was overwhelming. It took courage just to look up, to lift our eyes from the flickering screens, to watch as the heavy air descended upon us. There were cracks in their lungs. Those others in the gloomy dark. The air was like some heavenly poison, too much, too late, too soon for any redemption. After a struggle with myself I found the door and walked out alone. I didn't look back. That would have been the right thing to do but the time was wrong. In the end it's all about time.

Trees walking

One day, quite by chance, the trees came to life. Of course the trees were already alive so when I say that they came to life I mean that they developed movements, animal attributes and what seemed to be consciousness, at a low level. Funnily enough I was the only one who was aware of it. Others couldn't see it. I tried to explain but well, you know how these things are. So as for the trees, they turned out to be reasonably peaceful, perhaps not fully aware of what people had done to them and happy to be poking about in the woods (?). How they were used as a raw material etc. might bother them if they ever find out. They were a bit like cows. I often think of how that first occurred to me. "These trees are alive now, fully alive, but really they are like big. wooden cattle with leaves and bark so there's no need to be afraid unless they learn anger". Once I'd come to this point I relaxed a bit. The trees would mostly be OK but there may be some upsets if they ever get to understand human history but that hasn't happened yet even with cows so we could be all fine albeit forestry is going to be a little more complicated now that the trees are moving around. I considered reading them the chapters from Lord of the Rings referring to the Ents but then decided that might be a bad idea as it might give them good ideas. We'll have to wait and see what happens next.