She once said that i came from the forest.
And when she said that i knew how true it had been, all along.
“It is something like this: I, an animal of the forest, was at that time barely in the forest; I lay somewhere in a muddy hollow (muddy only as a consequence of my being there, naturally); and then I saw you out there in the open, the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen; I forgot everything; I forgot myself totally, I got up, came closer, anxious to be secure in this freedom that was new though familiar; I approached even closer, came to you, you were so good, I huddled near you, as though I had the right, I placed my face in your hand, I was so happy, so proud, so free, so powerful, so much at home – and yet, at bottom, I was only the animal, I’d always belonged to the forest alone, and if I was living here in the open it was only by your grace… It couldn’t last… I saw more and more clearly what a sordid pest, what a clumsy obstacle I was for you in every respect… I recalled who I was; in your eyes I read the end of illusion; I experienced the fright that is in dreams (acting as though one were at home in the place where one didn’t belong), I had that fright in reality itself; I had to return to the darkness, I couldn’t bear the sun any longer, I was desperate, really, like a stray animal, I began to run breathlessly; constantly the thought, “If only I could take her with me!” and the counterthought “Is it ever dark where she is?” / You ask me how I live: that is how I live.”
Franz Kafka, Briefe an Milena.
Thanks to Peter Steeves,
for his beautiful talk Monkey See
And i love all the differences she makes.
And so it happens that so soon after i turned my back to an old forest i find myself in the middle of the impressive ancient forest of the redwoods.
Not the forest was left behind, but the world became forest.
It is Maria who made me see all of this.
Will you come and visit this forest/world, sweet amoureuse?