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edenfallingI finished rereading Patricia McKillip's The Riddle-Master of Hed today. As I was reading the scene where Danan Isig teaches Morgon how to change into a tree, I remembered the way that hit me when I first read the book, something like fifteen years ago.
It seemed to me that it would be perfectly natural to become a tree -- you would just stand with your feet firmly on the ground and be still, let everything drain out of you until all that was left was peace and waiting.
I never actually succeeded in becoming a tree, but I used to go try, now and then, just for the quiet and the stillness. I suppose, in retrospect, it was a form of meditation. I might have been a lot happier as a child and a teenager if I'd practiced being a tree more often.
I was very bad at learning to hold onto the stillness. It took me years to learn to let things roll off my back, because they didn't really touch anything important. But I picked up fading out of people's attention pretty damn quickly; that's more a matter of posture and externally projected attitude than a change in a person's internal state. I haven't practiced that as much in recent years -- not on purpose, anyway -- but it's a hard habit to break.
...
Dunno if I'm going anywhere with this, really, but I spent part of church service this morning attempting to become a tree, just to escape Rev. Hepokoski's speaking style. Her voice and her delivery grate on me to excruciating levels. Then, just now, I spent ten minutes being a tree when a fire alarm cleared everyone out of the building this computer lab is in.
It's peaceful, trying to be a tree.
But it does get lonely.
It seemed to me that it would be perfectly natural to become a tree -- you would just stand with your feet firmly on the ground and be still, let everything drain out of you until all that was left was peace and waiting.
I never actually succeeded in becoming a tree, but I used to go try, now and then, just for the quiet and the stillness. I suppose, in retrospect, it was a form of meditation. I might have been a lot happier as a child and a teenager if I'd practiced being a tree more often.
I was very bad at learning to hold onto the stillness. It took me years to learn to let things roll off my back, because they didn't really touch anything important. But I picked up fading out of people's attention pretty damn quickly; that's more a matter of posture and externally projected attitude than a change in a person's internal state. I haven't practiced that as much in recent years -- not on purpose, anyway -- but it's a hard habit to break.
...
Dunno if I'm going anywhere with this, really, but I spent part of church service this morning attempting to become a tree, just to escape Rev. Hepokoski's speaking style. Her voice and her delivery grate on me to excruciating levels. Then, just now, I spent ten minutes being a tree when a fire alarm cleared everyone out of the building this computer lab is in.
It's peaceful, trying to be a tree.
But it does get lonely.
