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No Birds Singing
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No Birds Singing |
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Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049California 
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No Birds Singing Life was moving too fast for me before that morning. That’s how I refer to it now. Everything is before that morning or after that morning. When I was a child I found out that the passing of time is relative. A summer seemed eternity, and the year that I was twelve, ten years passed before I became thirteen. The days before that morning I felt that I could scream for all that needed doing and the little time there was to do it. The years were slipping by and I couldn’t account for the minutes. That morning I had gone to the mountains in the hope of finding a whole day and maybe a whole me. It was one of those smog-filled breathless days, but the further up the mountain I climbed, the bluer the sky became and the better I felt. Each tree had an outline. Looking down into the distance that was the city I saw nothing but a gray sea, with a few high hills stretching towards the sun. I stopped at a picnic grounds on the summit. There was no one around and the café across the street had a "Closed" sign on the door. I sat down to rest with my back against a tree. I guess it was then I became aware of the silence. It seemed strange that there were no birds singing. I drank in the purity of that silence with my heart. I closed my eyes and was aware only of the sound of my own breathing. Then from within the silence I heard a sound that was more felt than heard. I moved toward the sound. It was and was not music, more keenly tuned than harmony. I was drawn on by a desire to fill all the empty spaces in me with this sound. I came to a tree, huge like and old Sequoia. The air around it was vibrant. The sound seemed to be coming from within the tree, as old as time yet as young as birth. The branches reached out towards me. I entered what appeared to be a hole in the side of the tree. There was light within and a stairway winding up and up. The walls on the inside were fluid and alive with green and blue. The stairway sucked me up towards its vortex. There was the odor of musk and green grass. Then the sound became a light and I came to know the light was me and all that existed from now until the end of time was this light. They tell me that they found me laying on my back beside the tree where I’d stopped to rest. They thought I was dead for the stillness of my breathing; they could not seem to find my pulse at all. My family thinks my brain was damaged on that morning. They never say so, but I can tell by their veiled eyes and the glances they give each other when they think that I’m not looking. I think I frighten them. It’s true that I have changed. I lose whole days sometimes to contemplation of a minute. This does not bother me for I have learned that there are other means of measure than time. The light I found inside myself still glows, not with such intensity, but with something I can’t explain in words. Perhaps if you were to see me, you could glean it in my eyes. I have been back to the top of that mountain many times but have been unable to hear the silence. The birds are always singing. |
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| © Copyright 1999 Martie Odell Ingebretsen - All Rights Reserved | |||
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merlynh Member
since 1999-09-26
Posts 411deer park, wa |
Very good. I'll look for more of your posts. Keep working. |
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Deep Blue Me Member
since 1999-11-04
Posts 396By a big lake |
Geez I love the trees. I love the mystery of this. Brain damage isn't such a bad thing if you can write like this. DB |
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ivordavies Senior Member
since 2007-01-10
Posts 739Chester, England |
Martie, Found this after looking through you work following your replying on one of my posts. Firstly thank you for the welcome, I only post on one other site and up to now have misssed the writers section on this one as it is nice to see authors who do both. Is this piece fiction, or is it real? Certainly the quality of your writing draws you in and makes it reality to me. If it is real I have other things I would like to comment on about the piece. I personally have done very little writing except for true stories that may appear unreal. I may post one such story to test the water..... Thanks again for the welcome to PIP, Have Fun, Ivor |
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Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049California |
Hi Ivor....thanks for finding this...gosh what a long time ago it was that I posted this...when I first joined pip. This writing is based on some truth, yes...but the tree and the interactions at the end are not. I was thinking of meditation. The whirlwind of my life in the first part was true and I thought, what if I could just meditate and change the way things seemed. The part about the tree didn't happen, but I think through this kind of spirit-centered act one can change the way others see you as well as the way that you feel yourself. That was what I was getting at. Thanks for pulling this back up...I'd be interested in whatever your thoughts were if this was true. |
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Trillium 
since 2001-03-09
Posts 12098Idaho, USA |
Hi Martie: I really enjoyed this. I suppose because I can feel a rapport with the person you write about (perhaps yourself). I like to climb the hills or follow an old road up the mountain until I am well away from everything manmade. There is an "other-worldliness about being alone in such an environment. Anything seems possible. Trillium Betty Lou Hebert |
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ivordavies Senior Member
since 2007-01-10
Posts 739Chester, England |
Sorry Martie, I did not actually mean was this 'literally real' as in, did a hole appear in the tree that you went in, but more was it based in reality as in, was there an unexplained incident occurred to yourself where you had been found in a semi-conscious state that had affected your outlook on life. At the moment I do not want to confuse issues by treading ground that is unsteady to walk, however, as I post further some of the things this brought into my mind will possibly seep out of my pen, watch this space! I am going to post a 'real' story in this forum, which may give you an indication of whether I am actually mad or otherwise, most of the rest of me is between the lines in my poetry. Again I enjoyed your write and will draw my own conclusions on what I think really happened! Ivor |
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