The tree

by Jon Rappoport

January 3, 2014

OutsideTheRealityMachine

He became the tree. There was no doubt about it. He wasn’t inside it or around it. He was it. He grew slowly, over time, over years, feeling every new branch and bud. Then he tired of it. So he became a Dodge parked in a junkyard. A rusty Dart, 1965. Memories. The trips along the country roads, the drunken sprees, the tickets, the jail time. He shook the cell bars and yelled at the guards. Then he tried the wooden water wheel in the middle of town. He never understood the wheel as a child, what it did, how it did it, but now he was turning and the water was running over him. Moss grew on him. He loved the history of the wheel, the bygone days, the quiet afternoons, the three-story house across the road and the Irish Setter who came out of the front door every day at 3, on a leash, and the tall soldier who held the leash and remembered his grandfather who called Setter a gun dog. The dog had been through two long wars. It was unclear what he’d done in battle. There was a curtain over that, an embroidered piece of cotton that had once been a dress a girl had worn to a picnic at night. She was lying on her back looking up at the stars. She was the stars. She went out and came back. The dog was there with her in the park, waiting for her to stand up and go home. A mother and a father were standing by the girl and they were looking up at the sky. The father was a tree, a walking talking tree. He was slowly growing, and no one knew this. But he knew it. He was keeping the secret in a pleasant way. At his office, he sold insurance. He spoke easily, as if he had all the time in the world. And the dog lay on the floor. The dog was in no hurry, either. The two of them were a team. They silently exchanged memories in a language that had no nouns. Over centuries, persons and places and things had fallen away. You could walk around to the back of a word and find a different meaning. The dog thought of it as sitting on a walk, looking at the front door of a house and then trotting through a gate, moving along the side, and walking up to the screen door to the kitchen and pushing it open and going in. A stove, a counter, a sink. A small table. Chairs. A girl walked in and opened a cabinet and took out a piece of satin. She held it up to her ear and listened to it. She walked out to the back yard with it and walked into a tall straight oak next to a hedge and a small lattice where purple grapes grew and hung. Summer afternoon.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.