I'm Charlie. Human. Facilitator. Activist. Therapist. Student of Life.
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She arrives with no notice
Engulfing, and folding me Deep into her embrace Where does she live and Why can’t I ever see her coming? She strokes my back so hard I can’t move Spreading her hands around My heart and gripping it hard She places wires upon my chest Connecting me up to the earth’s heartbeat I can’t block it out I must feel and hear The sadness With every stroke She shows me the dying forests The choking oceans The crying children The spreading fires The tears of their sadness are Rolling down my cheeks Their sadness becomes mine Mine becomes theirs Entangled in each other’s suffering Who is she and why does she come? Why does she do this to us? I sit in these paralysing waves And part of me wants to break free While another part Wants to be washed right over I sit in these waves And time slows I sit in these waves And everything goes quiet I sit in these waves And then I hear music Then, I see paintings Then, I feel the love Of billions of humans And Trillions of species Trying to live here In love, with sadness all around
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Yesterday I traipsed the world on google earth.
I found places I never new existed - cities dug away deep in African valleys, towns nestled in far north Alaska, tiny islands peppering pockets of little known seas. I felt my awe of the oceans skyrocket - their complex majestic trenches, marinated in a myriad of blues, rising up and down in ways that rival the grandest mountain ranges. I gazed at magical salt lakes ringed in burnt orange, bright white and neon green. I admired vast tracts of forest - bumpy canopy tops blanketing the earth so that we can all breathe. I found tiny settlements speckled across what looked like inhospitable land, fed here and there by the trickle of whatever water could be found. And then larger towns and cities hugging the banks of the world’s great rivers as, like thick pumping arteries, they work harder and harder to quench our warming world’s thirst. I saw airports etched onto delicate coral atolls, reef structures which from above looked like osteoporotic spines sinking into the ocean. I found burger restaurants abutting national parks and petrol stations in the middle of nowhere. And I saw tract after tract of land, once densely vegetated, abundant with flora and fauna, now flat and sad, covered in concrete and conflict. As I scanned the earth more and more, zooming in and out, in and out, it felt both meditative and tragic - a picture of paradox. A beautiful world crying out not so much for us to love and respect it but first of all to love and respect one another so that we can learn to live on this earth in peace. I feel old, so old.
And tired. A tiredness you can’t sleep off Because it stains your bones, flesh And mind, like thick red wine Stuck to a brand new carpet. My brain is knotted, the folds sewn Together with wire, clumped with pain Trying to unravel out of my skull, To relax and be liberated of thoughts & impulses Stars and feelings, break free From the prison it inhabits inside my head And I feel so old, like a creaky cedar tree That has sunk its roots to the same bed of earth For so long that it can’t see the forest, Can’t glimpse the sky, only feel the Burden of this deep attachment Can’t blow with the wind Fixated in place forever Creak, creak, creak My bones feel the world’s breath against them Blowing through them. They hurt. They heave. When I wake, they remind me of its suffering When I lie down, my spine aches For the rest of the world. My body is burning, my skin swelling With the pain of the world. And I feel so old, so so old. My thoughts don’t flow like they used to Because the rivers don’t flow, we drained them dry. My eyes don’t see things like they used to, Because the world’s gone blind With all this pointless suffering My heart doesn’t feel like it used to Because too much love’s been betrayed My nerves are on edge Because everything’s tipping over And we don’t know how to stop it My shoulders are weighed down by bricks So many bricks All the bricks we’ve thrown at each other Built empires with and then torn them down Made homes with and then bulldozed them over They’re scraping at my back Like claws of species slipping away From us forever, because We were too selfish to think of anyone else Here one day, gone the next. I can’t cry because there’s no water left We’ve used it all, sprayed it all Washed our cars and then Thrown it down the drain Whilst in deserts and towns, children die From thirst and hunger The drip of a tap is not something They’ve ever heard before. My veins pulse as the sound of Digging fills my ears As we cut open the heart of the earth and Suck out its blood to fuel our Transient existence Drip, drip, drip. I feel the world inside me. Around me. Beside me. I feel its suffering around me, Throughout me, outside me. And I feel old, so, so old. Painfully old. |
Charlie WoodHuman. Activist. Facilitator. Therapist. Student of Life. Trying to do my bit to build a kinder world. Archives
December 2024
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