THE TWIN EUCALYPTUS

THE TWIN EUCALYPTUS, originally uploaded by mavenimagery® Bringin Artist 2Gether For Cancer.

THE TWIN EUCALYPTUS
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Excerpt from the "The Split"

... I sat precariously on the edge of my tree house, my legs dangled, swinging to and fro, with a constant, enthusiastic rhythm, beneath a shadow of the twin eucalyptus’ lush leaves and over hanging long branches while I munched absently at a bread roll with cheese and fresh tomato (I would sneak them out because if Mom’d caught me she’d rant and rave for spoiling my appetite before dinner. A dinner I definitely wouldn’t mind spoiling: boiled potatoes and bean stew), more out of habit than hunger; dropping crumbs all down into a small, shallow ditch that marked a boundary between the neighbor’s front garden, although it was no more than a plat which was fringed with withered acacias (I loved those acacias) a tiled red-roof, some loose and broken, rather ugly, unpainted house and in the front stood a well with a battered bucket on a chain. In the winter, when the pipes had been frozen, we drew water from it with our blue and numb hands in the morning because if you wanted to wash your face and drink tea before you go to school you had to draw from the well. The water was dirty, slightly sweet and it had an unpleasant, row aftertaste, like the taste of an egg that afterwards I’d be spitting for hours (after more than two decades still remember the taste that seemed somehow seeped into the roof of my mouth).
Each afternoon, after stultifying lessons and daily school banality, I would sit in this shady nook, feeling the wind and gazing across the verdant meadows, all the while, one corner of my mind remained open to the external world. I listened, intently, to the composing, harsh calls of rook birds carried merrily above, and from above the roof on my perch on the edge as I gazed far, I could see the little clearing in the woods where local kids kicked ball.
It was for me an enrapturing place, quite on top of the world, it’s levitation and freedom promising a kind of timelessness. And so, I thought, what were the circumstances that formed such order and beauty? Why is there a universe at all? What was the mystery, the innate force behind them? How could such a mystery go so long unsolved by prophets like Jesus, Mosses and Muhammad? What was wrong with philosophers and mathematicians like Newton, Einstein, Descartes, Darwin, Hume and Aristotle; what was wrong with the psychics and clairvoyants?
There was a time, in this perfect resting place, beneath the shadow of the eucalyptus tree, when I thought about Einstein's general relativity that we had learned at school. That space-time began at the big bang singularity and would come to an end, say, billions billions years later. But did the universe in fact have a beginning or an end? Was there only nothingness after death? Was there really a God? A creator? If there was, where was He, how did He look like? Why He did not intervene in the universe? Why did He allow my dog, Creone, to be ran over by a truck? Why it had to be my dog when there was hundreds of thousands of dogs on this planet? Why did God do things? Why did God take the life of a child? There was another thing I wanted to understand. What was the role of God in the affairs of the universe?
I thought: if God was responsible for every remarkable contrivance of the living world and the adapted complexity of all existing organisms, then what (or who) was responsible for the origin of God? Once I remembered my mother had said that, God has no origin. He always existed and will continue to exist for all eternity. He allowed the universe to evolve and did not intervene in the universe. He sees and hears everyone of us. At this exact moment, he is seeing us as if we were in His vision. And he can hear an ant ailing in a stormy weather. God is a creator who sustains everything in existence.
Yet still, he did not intervene. It made no sense to me, whatsoever. Why, I thought, paint a picture, lending it the greatest life that it could possibly posses, yet not look at it! Was it not rather unreasonable?
I thought these things as I sat there. I concentrated mainly on the questions (I was into the habit of always asking questions. For I thought a lot, worried too much, and questioned everything and believed nothing) of understanding the world, of what was happening around of me. He that nothing questions, nothing learns, was my motto.
This was when I felt good about the world and began to make psychological sense of myself, or more accurately, of myself and the world together. Shortly, I had increased an obsessive concern with nature as well with the mystical secrets of human consciousness. I studied the structure and proportion of trees, flowers and the intricate patterns. I had the sense that my life will be full and exiting—not a road wound-up hills all the way.
And so thinking I would fall a sleep and the questions and the characters and saints and thinkers and my dreams would blend.