I dreamt last night of a large, verdant garden, towering walls lined with neat hedges, all twinkling with alabaster. The grass-blades grew to whichever height they so pleased to reach, and the earth underneath gave it a firmness in its structure. It was nearly noon, for the sun seemed to be approaching her place at the cornice of the sky, which itself was a brilliant cerulean hue, that of a lapis-infused pigment intended for paintings hung in old cathedrals.
It was a peculiar construction, the garden. It sang its birdsong with cordial subtlety, and the waterfalls and fountains had conversations with their water-flows: though so much life had been infused into the wealth around me, it was quiet and orderly as a library is, but in place of books lie thousands of swatches of angiosperms, all mature and in bloom for the coming of the summer. They led unending paths down passages adorned with indecipherable wall-carvings, gazebos of all shapes and sizes, and emptied often into large yards which served to allow ventures into even more flower-corridors.
The paths were full with the evidence of usage: perpetually-open iron gates, unkept by any sort of guardian; neatly-clipped vines found along tree-trunks, and the sides of the garden boundaries; large, ornamental, and at times geometric designs imprinted into the grass—but there was no semblance of consciousness anywhere I walked, besides myself.
Until I heard her voice.
It was kind, and soft, and alien to the concept of toughness. It knew the garden well, and sang alongside its symphonies of quietness, with the attitude of an auxiliary instrument but the performance of a choir. It was soothing, above all, and close-to-heart. I knew it, but not well: a suppressed memory, like that of an estranged relative seen fewer than thrice, and only in reunions where you were below four years old. It tugged at my arteries, and anaesthesized my brain.
But I knew I had to find her; as if a compass in my mind had, at once, redirectioned its North towards the origin of the auditory warmth. I felt it venture deep within, to a visceral extent: I knew her voice, I could swear.
So I managed through vines and tall-grass, and treillage filled with plantage. The corridors wound aimlessly, but with purpose. Every new species of flower I took sight of had made her voice grow ever so slightly louder. I walked for seemingly hours past waterfalls and stone benches and yet more old, wooden gazebos, all while the sun held her place in the sky, almost as a spectator from the heavens above. Strangely, when I looked up, a large tuft of leaves came above the calcite walls, green with chlorophyll and luminescent with sunrays.
I wandered, ambling, permabulating, pacing, and trekking through the greenery with an air of wonder and curiosity: the girl, the lady, the singer, the gardener—who is she? Why does her song sound so utterly familiar, like some arcane, subliminal, inter-generational message passed through to my subconscious? Why am I obsessed with her that I would walk for hours to know who she is?
I went on for days, it felt—the timelessness of the dream mattered nil to my now essentially-lucid self. I walked up pearl-colored steps, basking in the iridescence of it; I saw great structures of leaves and vines alone; I saw the many millions-upon-millions-upon-millions of species of flora, and the entire gamut of human color vision was now second nature to me. I saw, and walked, and heard, and saw again. I kept on.
And then, the largest gates I had seen yet.
All white and pearlescent, and made of the most attractive calcite imaginable.
It was open.
It led into a large, circular courtyard, with no more openings to break up the walls.
A dead end.
A massive tree—so this is it—had situated itself in the middle of it, and vines and branches of lesser bark had plotted themselves along the circumference. The space was wide, and shaded mostly by the centerpiece, with light-streaks earning their way through the leaves, and planting into the ground to illuminate the middle. The air was crystal-clear, and came in and out of the lungs and alevoli with a perfect smoothness, but each breath was ever more rejuvenating than the last. Somehow, there was a light breeze within the yard, which was evident once I walked out of the thick archway in which the gate had resided. The floor was all grassy and featureless, aside from a singular caveat:
…a plaid, blue-and-white picnic blanket, aglow, amidst the interactions of the photons in the atmosphere.
She was there, sat upon it, facing away, reading a book.
She was humming as she always does. It resonates through the whole place, reaching my body and moving it as well.
She donned a large sunhat, tilted slightly toward my direction: her locks cascading down under it, greeting the blanket on the ground. She was as fair as I was, but lit by the sun of the sky overtop, she seemed to be almost incandescent. She wore a white dress, of the same color as the garden walls, but yet still brighter, and her humming was now clearer than it ever was.
The melody she took with her voice was cadent, yet aimless—organized, yet entirely improvised, as it always came to change and never repeat. Any given sequence of notes was likely entirely transient, and it would be the last time she would ever vocalize those frequencies again. It was completely idiosyncratic.
And the girl herself was beautiful, though I hadn’t glimpsed her face yet—I called to her on entering the circular construction, so as to get her attention, and not to startle her later.
“Hello?”
No response.
“Hello, ma’am?”
No response.
The sounds of the distant birds and waterfalls began to fade out for near-total silence, save for the brushing of the wind on the grass blades.
“Hello, ma’am? I’ve heard your singing and humming from around the garden, and I want to know what you’re doing here. Hello?”
A head is turned.
A book braid is laid down on the current page.
A sunhat is adjusted.
A pair of eyes makes contact.
A hum stops, and a word starts.
“Yes?”
A response.
“Hi. I… I’m here. I want to know why you are here, in the garden, in this courtyard. Who you are.”
“Sit.”
She gestures to an empty space on the blanket, and turns around to face a wall away from the tree, looking westward. I walk to the place beside the shadow of the tree. The spot is shaded slightly by the leaves.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Who are you?” She asks back.
For a second, I contemplate the question. I’ve forgotten my name. I haven’t looked at myself since my arrival: I’ve forgotten what I look like. Memories of family, friends, and any affiliations in the real world are drowned out by the garden. I don’t know what to answer. I say this:
“That doesn't… I…
…I don’t know.”
“An interesting answer,” she replies. “I suppose that’ll do for now.”
“So, may I ask who you are?” I say.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well, who are you, then?”
She pauses for a second, the faint sounds of wind filling in the absence of noise. She breathes and sighs deeply. She collects herself, and begins her answer.
“I know that you know me very well, and you do for a reason, though not for the credit of any external factors, neither family, nor peers, nor newspapers, nor television presenters, nor blog-writers, nor protesters, nor politicians, nor teachers, nor companies, nor entertainers, nor marketers, nor billboards, nor any other consciousness in the universe you live in.
You know me for some innate, intrinsic feeling which cultivates deep within your mind, like the tree we sit beside right now. It grows through your life, becoming more and more solid and hard not to notice: I imagine that if you possessed one, it would grow to reach three times as tall as this one does.
For the roots of the tree grow deep into your soil: they tug at your nerves more and more as you grow, and as it grows with you. The roots make you feel uncomfortable in your own self, and you then feel extrinsic to your own body because of the pain. You don’t see your reflection anymore—the tree doesn’t let you.
Through your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades, the tree grows wider and wider with its carbon, its leaves a false promise of respiration: it takes more from you in the underground than it can give out in its green—in a way, it is parasitic. Its efforts to drain are imperative to it, and to arrest its development as soon as possible is a great priority to those with an occupied courtyard. It is a weed.
Us with these leeching beings within us are perseverant arborists. We do what we can to halt the growth of the tree and live comfortably, but potentially with still an amount of pushback from what is left to live in the courtyard. If the pains grow out of hand, we are dangerous to ourselves. Some die early. Some die deep within the throes of depression. We fight against this.
Absolute euphoria for us would be complete retirement: to not have to slave away at our sucker-shrubs in the first place. To have a clean courtyard, as most of the population does. But alas, it is not so. Maybe the reason for it is divine, but I am not that close enough to heaven to know for sure.
I am an arborist.
More specifically, I am you. I brought you here to tell you this. It should explain your lifelong discomfort. You’re harboring a parasite of your own.
But yes, I am you, as you will be when you are wiser and more mature; when you are more content, and your weed and its roots are taken care of; when you know the answer to the question I’d asked earlier. I am the person you have been seeing beneath your skin in the mirror, and the one who you hide away in your dreams to aid with the pains you experience whenever your self is brought up in conversation, or even in your own thoughts. In some ways, I am an end goal. An idealized version of yourself, though it may seem strange—but remember this, and disregard the fact that this is all a dream:
You deserve to know who you are.
You deserve to find me again.
You deserve to retire your mental slavery.
You deserve to be the person your parasite prevents you from being.
You deserve to live comfortably.
You deserve to live without being cast away for who you are.
You deserve to live.
And above all, you deserve to be loved.
That's all.”
Once the final word had left her mouth, the arborist stood up, and I stayed sat down on the mat. She turned away from me to face the tree. Then she paced further out, away from the shadow cast by the tree. Then she looked straight up to the sun. Then to me, still with her sunhat on. She said goodbye, as I was left on the blanket, with nothing but the book beside me. She walked out of the gates to the courtyard, and I sat alone, with the company of the wind sounds hitting my eardrums.
I opened the book, and I couldn’t read any of the words. But I knew them very well, and I know I would read them again one day.
I looked toward the gates, managing one last “Farewell,” before she was completely out of sight.
I looked down at the book. Then up at the sun. Then toward the alabaster walls. Then to the tree.
I sighed, and closed my eyes.
One of these days.
2024/07/11