I don't speak "tree"

A friend of mine commented the other day that I need to blog more. So as part of his birthday wish I have decided to indeed, be more blog-tastic than ever before. What that means I am not entirely sure. But I anticipate more random thoughts, interesting pictures and maybe a haiku. Who knows...

I've been doing a lot of inner-traveling over the winter months here in Montreal. Along with Landmark (thanks, Fran!) and a New Earth I just don't feel like I look at things that same way. Don't get me wrong, I am so far from being spiritually enlightened and I would never dare say that I am more spiritually enlightened than someone else. That would still be egoic bullshit. But I have awoken. And it's taken almost thirty two years to get to this point. Pretty exciting.

I'm living with a martian. It's true. I'll try to explain. At the restaurant I work at there used to be a very thin, tiny tree in the front of the entrance. I wish I knew the name of the tree, maybe I'll take a picture of it and put in on the blog but I like not knowing what it's called and I'll get into that in a second. The thing was, this tree was dying. Every time I would move it, even an inch, its leaves would fall off like flakes of dandruff. Finally my manager, Julie, said, "just take it out back into the garbage."

I am no green thumb. I've killed my fair share of plants in my time, I've given them names, talk to them and watched them die a slow death feeling guilty that I was some sort of murderer. Terrible stuff. Well I couldn't just throw out this tree. After my shift, I walked up a steep incline carrying it all the way home. My sister, who I am now living with, was not too pleased to see a green living thing in her apartment.

I know nothing about gardening or maintaining plant life but I had a hunch that if I just sprayed the leaves with a water bottle the tree would like that. And it did. It does. And it's growing very well thank you.

The thing is I made two discoveries over the last few weeks which is why I think my tree is from another planet, or maybe not from another planet, but is totally mysterious to me. After reading a New Earth and watching the webcast, Eckhart Tolle remarked how in the world of form we need to categorize things and name them. But by naming these things lose some of their magic. For instance, when you are in a park and you see an oak tree it is not really an oak tree. It is called an oak tree. Humans named it that. We even named it tree. I don't know why. So now, when I look at the tree residing in my apartment, it's totally awesome and weird at the same time. Because for the first time in a long time, I am actually looking that this thing with vibrant green leaves and I haven't a clue what it is. But I'm cool with it. And in some weird way I think he's thinking the same thing too.

The other discovery was that Julie later asked me how the tree was doing and if I talk to it. I said that I did but when I thought more about it I really don't. And then it dawned on me. I don't really talk with my tree because I don't think trees speak or think in english. They think in "tree". At best, we're these two living things co-existing in the same space and twice a day I go over to it with my water bottle and maybe he says something like, "yo, thanks for the spray" and I'm like, "no worries." My tree's a martian. I'm convinced.

I love Julie because she comes up with these random gems. We have two flat screen TVs behind the bar and one time she was staring at the screen and said, "I swear to God. If you watch CNN for more than an hour you think the world is going to end." I laughed because it's so true. I look at CNN now and all I see is "News" that is formatted to look like Entertainment Tonight. The other day a friend showed me a website that makes me feel like the world is not going to end. It's a series of lectures that have been going on since 1984 called TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). There are so many inspiring things going on in this world and it's totally worth checking out.

www.ted.com