One eventually gets used to being uprooted.

The first time is the hardest, and I was (un)fortunate enough to experience it twice in the space of 2 months, painfully discovering where I’d unconsciously put down roots, often too many of them for anyone’s good, and the trail of destruction the severing left behind. A new equilibrium took a few years to establish.

Let go, let’s go.
It gets easier with time; it gets easier each time.

The greatest gifts to come out of that mess? I’m actually glad and grateful things happened the way they did. Quite a bit of cleaning up and work got done, and I’ve gained much in terms of awareness, perspective, community… it’s an ongoing process, though. Learning never ends.

A few years back, in the humidity of Halloween Horror Nights and inefficient queues (never again, thank you), friends gave my 八字 (ba zi) a once-over…

So I’m Yin Wood. Soft, flexible wood, nothing at all like a big tree with sturdy buttresses. I depend on the support of structures and people to grow. I lean. I manipulate. I choke. I strangle. If things get out of control, if I don’t have mastery. (Yes, I’m being selective and choosing qualities of Yin Wood that are relevant to this post. There are lots of great Yin Wood qualities, too. Go Google.) Recently I was reflecting on the ways I am manipulative, and this ba zi conversation popped into mind.

I guess it makes a lot of sense, given my past as a strangler fig. Never again. It also makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the present and future, given my desire for lightness and light, and my internal conversations about receiving support. Hmm… If I am destined to be an epiphyte, let me be the plainest of orchids. Vanilla. Or something common, hardy, like Tillandsia. Or if I want to be creepy, Pyrrosia piloselloides.

I could be a lot more self-blamey about what happened in the past, and call it “responsibility”, but despite my ability to, I choose not to.
Choice matters.

Lightness matters.
So it is towards lightness and light that I orient myself. Light of being, light of touch, light of possessions, but no lightweight.
En-light.

/epiphyte/

your tentative tendrils inch
towards the light, delicate step
after step, creating nodes
of gentle contact as you
climb the tree slowly,
steadily,
each of your cells with its own
compass, an unwavering sense
of direction — upwards, against
gravity's flow, lightwards, constantly
course-correcting, recalibrating,
sense-checking, never-ever-hurrying,
relentlessly questing, knowing for certain:
you are not a parasite,
you are a network, dendritic,
neural, personal,
you are an ecosystem,
light-seeking, beautiful, quiet,
unassuming,
essential.

— 3 November 2019