Walking Up the Tower

Published January 19th 2025

I have decided I do not care about myself. And neither do you. This is perfect. We will walk among the trees. These, we care for.

What is it, a new year? I didn't notice much. I slept through the change. The days have been filled with gusts of snow, deep cold, and before that, a misty winter rain. The wind is fierce, carrying tides from many places. I listen to its howls as if I can understand the beings that ride it as messengers. There, hushed gossip from the East.

And yes, a great shifting in the south. This no wind need tell me, for I have read news reports, and I have heard people speak. This, it is loud, it is demanding. Yet in my soul I only see something on its return to being dust. And I feel relieved, regardless of how it might seem; a world that is doomed. In my heart I know that in fact, good things are rising now. I couldn't tell you precisely how, beyond my vote for the true powers to rise, for the real leaders of the west to show their faces and arms. But I do not see this happening yet, and it is not why my heart feels light.

So many trees, so few I know by name. I am young. Of course, I speak relative to how old I would like to be, which is going to make anybody reading this laugh, or groan. How old? Hundreds of years. Thousands of years. Like the good old trees. I am a baby. I know nothing. And according to most, living in a fantasy. But I cannot find any genuine identity elsewhere, outside this slice of deep time I sit on, clueless for how to secure, and still feeling alone in its pursuit. Still it is the loudest thought I have these days; immortality, agelessness, the sort the soul knows, but that flesh desires, impossibly, hungrily, and yet, with a sense that in some ancient world, life itself worked different. The body misses something it cannot remember.

But I digress. I have said too much about myself, the self that I nor anybody cares about right now. Our eyes have glazed over. Let us keep walking.

Outside this house, a ring of trees stand taller, cradling it. There are a few large cedars, with twisting red trunks, the sort that thrive near the rivers and rocks of this town, away from bigger cities. There are spruce in the back, kingly and wise, and another great white pine, ethereal and soft. There is an old wild cherry, who bears sparse fruit, and yet another pine and hemlock, and saplings scattered about. And beyond this land, yet dozens more, who may soon be lost to a new building project next door.

I leave the sanction of these trees and head out to another forest, where a tower was built so man may soar above the forest heights, at least, for a moment. Not to compete with their heights, or to outdo the glory of the hills and mountains. Only to revel there a moment, in wonder. Wonder, the right reason to build serious things, like towers, or civilizations.

Now I am walking the road to the tower, and it is a new day. The clouds have parted. The stars and moon have shifted. Some grand and also personally impactful astrological thing is happening I wouldn't be able to delve into without jarring the tone. But it has me questioning the way I started this writing, since today is the day to finish it.

Why say I do not care about myself, nor do you care about me? I want to answer it is because when I write, I stop existing. When I write (which I do as I walk) I suddenly grow bored of myself and even all my thoughts. I write and think of words to the point the words become dust and sounds without meaning, to the point even my sense of self feels like clothing worn too tight. T h e w o r d s strettttchhh and meeellllllllt iiinntooo soooouunnnnndsss and eveenn S E L F A W A R EEEE N E SSSS looosssenns its holllld on being a sellllf or a boddddy, raaaathhher tha aa n ev erythiiiiing t h a t sssself i s s s a w a r e o f. Then I become atmosphere. The pine bark. The whole sky. Then there is only a localized awareness, that sometimes needs a name and numerical facts, out of societal convenience.

There is also this old story that I am not loved. Sometimes it seeps into things I think, jokes I make, introductions I write. I am slowly unraveling it. I know it's not true, but god is it intoxicating. It promises to cure me of all disappointment. It promises that You Too Can Be Absolutely Peaceful If You Can Be Completely Alone! But though it may be charismatic, it is defeated by truth. I fight it by clarifying that the introduction of this essay is not accurate, and I apologize.

Towering white pines line the road. Some are leaned over, but were never removed, probably toppled by a tornado. It is silent, it is winter, and it is cold. I start to analyze the trees; which have which bark, how yellow birch pick up as the stream in the dell widens, and realize that this is not what I can write about here. This will bore the reader. Let's skip to the tower.

The tower is this spinning thing, rising sublimely above the landscape, that forces you to walk in circles for what might be over a kilometer, upward, upward, upward, to the top. Gradually the view expands as you spiral up the tower, the mountains shimmer into view, rolling hills fall back off the horizon. The whole path and tower itself are raised above the ground on tall pillars and I feel a rare trepidation when I realize how dependent I am on other people. I look down to the receding ground and decide to trust the world of men, just for today, to restore my faith in humanity, out of necessity.

At the top, you can feel the whole thing rocking, ever so slightly. Some of the distant mountains sparkle in their coat of snow. They are not snow-capped. They are white because their trees are dusted over. I love the way the mountains and hills ripple backward until there is nothing more to see. They curve and shimmer like the body of a beautiful woman that is the Earth. Pine and balsam fir reach for the sky like paintbrush bristles. The directions are marked, depending where you stand on the platform. There is North. There is the Parc National du Tremblant. There is Ivujivik. There is the Pole. There is Yellowknife. There is Nunavut. There is West. There is Regina. There is Vancouver. There is Victoria. There is South. There is New York City. There is Washington D.C.

Can mountains grow? The thought comes back. It is the thought I had when faced with new buildings very close to home, that I did not find beautiful, that obscured the beauty of the land. Can the mountains themselves grow? Maybe they can. Maybe they're not finished what they're working on.

This splendid view, the one birds always know, makes me dream about what else man could build. It's the feeling I get in this forest; it's what the trees here whisper to me about. Build something new, something deeply new. Build something big, that serves a new kind of power. Help initiate new civilization, you could. Realistically, I am struggling to finish school, start a business, and write a book. Normal human ambitions, and already too many. Before initiating new pyramids, let us merely do that. This is part of the reason I want to have a lot of time here.

The sun is bright and scalds overhead. It shines on my skin and I put on sunglasses for a minute, and then hold them away from my skin because they ruin the view, which is more important. I am partially avoiding the sun. It clearly affects my skin. But I also know better than to fear the sun. This is a grand mass of light and superconsciousness we're talking about (don't ask me what studies prove this). Me and the sun, we will work something out.

I wait three hours for the next bus, finishing my book (The Power of Myth) and giving made-up names from a made-up language to made-up symbols from a made-up world. Someday, hopefully very soon, I will share it.

I return to my stronghold. Outside snow covers the ground. Snow covers the trees. Snow covers the tiny cardboard coffin holding a dead mouse, whose body was found floating in the sink (!!(@#). Snow covers the mouse and tiny offerings of pinecone, a dried flower, and a chestnut it lays with, the mouse who I thought would be eaten, but was instead left to rest. And to freeze. The moon is crisp and full in the sky, before even dusk. She rules the evening. Deer visit the yard in the night. I sink back into work.

When I do not walk with trees the days are filled with writing and study. I am grateful for the opportunity to finally get into those things called goals and that thing called a career, but it sounds more idyllic than it is. I am also growing weary, wondering when it will be over, when I will complete something and be ready to leave where I am, maybe before I even complete something. Wherever I go, it will be closer to the trees, and further from new triplexes.

The world is changing. Dance might be the answer. I didn't dance on the tower, with the trees (I should have). But I've been remembering it's one of the most powerful things one can do. Move not like men, but dragons.

And I do dance, imagining peace, beauty, sanity, love, joy. I imagine those abstract things, somehow more real to us than real things, down to the genes. I imagine DNA, not only mine, but archetypal strands of All Humanity, rapidly stitching together with the incredible industry of a eukaryotic cell, gold and also every color, somehow weaving with the spirit of peace, somehow coding with the energy of love. As I dance, I imagine the world as it wholly wishes to be (if I were to assume); healthy, of enlivened heart, with connected energetic lines and nodes, cleansed of the filth of what occurs in the darkness (if I were to judge), and new structures, the megalith of the future; built for the love of wonder, to seal awareness and the intent to cultivate a world based on wholesome values.

As I dance I call new leaders forth. For now we are a throneless nation, kept by stewards who say otherwise.

As I dance I project energy, that would say this, if it were to say something:

True leaders of the West come forth! You who are born to love and serve, you who hold alive in your heart the hearts of your kin, awaken now, step into full power and claim your birthright, that is the right of all, finding courage through fear, resolve through doubt, and power through pain, for it is time! Take seat now, in the great halls of man, to claim scepter and scroll, and be honored in measure with your humility and service. For now the clouds part, and it is a new day! Clarity dawns and a new purpose shines. Stand strong in the name of virtues around which new societies orbit, virtues that are not new, yet will be renamed and reborn, therefore fulfilling an old dream. Come and redeem the suffering of your people, for the sword of swords is in your hands should you claim it. Come and claim the throne, upon which you shall have not power, but wield a power that does not belong to you, but to the hearts of all man, and land, and all life.

Can you tell? I really want to see the return of the king. Figuratively speaking.

As I lay still in the dark later on, I start to feel something has returned in the world, some true power from the deep, even if the signs say otherwise.

Once upon a time, I felt strongly that all was well. But when I played in the field of life, I got lost. I lost my sense that heaven is already now, here, beyond hell or opposite. I fell into a dualized state, thinking there even was an enemy, an oppressor, whether seen, whether secret. Now, my sense of some great Other dwindles. By the silent wisdom of trees, by some thawing ice within, I feel a sense of absolute power returning. It is power that is not mine but belongs to life, power that meets no match, that embraces All Beings yet tolerates no abuse. Power that dismembers and devours its enemy, as it dances with them in the same breath.

I do not know my proper role in this great game. Is it to breathe life and fire into the souls of those meant to take seat, with far thicker skin than my own? Am I to take seat? My skin was never very thick. Or am I to help breathe life and fire into all souls, so that the full voice of the people is the loudest and the only? This I can agree to. At least I can try.

It's a new year. I won't entirely ignore it, even if the numbers are wrong. Even if the story is off. What story would be grand and worthy of a new calendar? Maybe we could only say many years after.

I can't promise to start building the pyramids for now. I am too content walking with the trees. I am too occupied with my own impossible questions. I am too busy just trying to be a normal human, if only for show. But in any case, I can keep learning the names of the trees. Their real names - not only genus or species, which are learned to be forgotten. But the ancient names - engraved with stories our bodies still remember and miss. Names our bodies are always reaching for, that have the trees reaching back to us. I can listen for the lost names of the trees, and echo them out. And I can sing them into a world that has forgotten, so that far more can be remembered.