Magnolia Trees

Suffering is a big old magnolia tree with roots as deep as the sea. The roots of the magnolia tree are fear and they spread like a cluster of capillaries beneath the Earth so that no one can see them. The soil, the Sun, the passing winds, and water are the terrifying myths: human perfection, eternal happiness, cinematic love, and the forbidden promise of immortality. From the suffering there come little magnolia flowers. Depending on the person the colors of the magnolia flowers are necessarily different; who knows if you are a chinese magnolia with soft pinkish little flowers or if you are a southern magnolia with strong whitish flowers made up of dried up sunlight or if you are a star magnolia with thin petals that look like the fingers of angels? No one tells you what type of magnolia tree you are but nonetheless you bloom, without the slightest idea of what your little flowers will look like, how your tree will take up the suffering which is a natural and organic part of life. You are a magnolia tree and from the roots of fear you grow through suffering flourishing into a zillion little flowers which are the consequences of that suffering. Some flowers, like mine, are secret and are written in words which attempt to inhabit hearts like bees seeking nectar. Some are concealed in formulas, in statistics, in contemplations about the physical nature of reality, quantum mechanics, eigenvectors and operators dancing in nuclear waltzes of synchronized creation. But everyone has flowers and everyone has trees sleeping in different soils and drinking different sunlight. And some days people just get tired of all that photosynthesis, of roots and trees and standing alone in huge forests. You can be so alone in a city, or anywhere else for that matter. So after rigorously constructing this parable about trees and roots and flowers I graciously remind you that you have legs and arms and lips and a thousand other things that we whimsical human beings have. I ask you to pull your roots out of the soil and shed your bark in confetti, but to keep your flowers and to share them with the world. Find another magnolia tree and intertwine your branches like sticky chewing gum in long hair. Remember only the flowers, letting your soft magnolia roots vanish from underneath.