I went deep into the woods and broke open Heaven.

She was far more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. Far subtler than I’d dreamed.

I went to be with the trees last week. I went deep into the woods and broke open heaven, she looked kind of washed up. It wasn’t what I thought of when I thought of heaven. She seemed distant and unknowable at first. But as I edged up the bluestone pancake rocks I was touched to see Heaven change. It all felt more like an ocean now. I was cold and awake and seen by every inky tree, squiggled on the periphery. The fog was thick and wanting. But I didn’t want for Heaven. It felt part of me. Within me.

I was surrounded by my sadness — mostly shades of blue and violet and grey. I was touching my sadness and it was recoiling a little each time, scared to be held. The light hit stone and bark in delicate ways, teasing out hints of life.
Heaven was far more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.
Far subtler than I’d dreamed.

When I got high enough up the mountain, I could see a variety of houses scattered on the grass. Everything felt scattered around. There was no pattern I could see. I couldn’t make out any signs that felt like home. But it was all too familiar. I knew this place better than I knew anyone. Better than my own body. I had spent so long trying to understand this place, the shifting shape of my sadness. I had drawn maps, written long-winded equations, made translations in different languages so that I could look out for it in my strange dialect dreams — so that I could spot it coming, in whatever form it took. I had tried to crack her code and so she became a lover in my hands. But not one that I loved. One that I cared for only to the extent that she gave me information about myself. I never wanted to see her for her or hold her without possessing. I wanted to deconstruct her, annihilate her quietly, pull her apart and put her back together in a way that was so far removed from the original source, well — you wouldn’t recognize her anymore. And that’s just the way I wanted it. So Heaven couldn’t look at my sadness. I didn’t want her seeing that.

Heaven didn’t need me. But I needed her. I had been longing for her all my life and tasted her on street corners and cigarette filters and astral readings and printed hand-outs — so many goddamn hand-outs. But here she looked different and I had to slow my pace to walk alongside her. I had to let go of all the images I’d held so tightly to make room for who she was now.

I kept up the mountain and I came upon a wall of moss clinging to the rock face. Water had frozen in mid-drip like iceberg tentacle fingers that reached down toward the forest floor. I smiled with awe. I marveled at the different versions of time I was seeing right in front me.
Flow. Motion. Stop. In Transit.
I was seeing it all. Heaven wasn’t bound to time. It had all happened in her and it couldn’t be separated from her.

I got to the lookout and felt the snowflakes hit my face in flurries. I had kept my eyes so glued to sadness, framing her arrival as a threat, that I’d forgotten to see her beauty. She was no less magical than joy and all those nights spent speeding through life with youthful force, like nothing could touch me. This was a quieter place and the way sound bounced about on the rocks was eerie and tender. I could hear so clearly, every little crushing twig, I could feel things so acutely and it wasn’t scary, it was intimate. I was up-close with Heaven and she was breathing on me and I felt summoned by every pulse of life around me. It was all growing. But it was happening underground. I was hearing the belly. The groans of incoming growth. The regeneration. Yes, this is where generations were born. This is where their curses were too.

I didn’t want to change a thing. I would never dream of asking these trees to be any different. To make them move hair from their eyes as I take a photo, or ask them to “smile” as though they weren’t radiant enough. They stood skeletal and full of promise, ready to be made into something. Sketches for life to come. Heaven was a sketch and all my life I’d been told it was a painting made with immovable mediums. Heaven was a life-size painting of God, they had said. A God-sized painting.

Didn’t they know god liked to be small?

So I stayed, for hours. Watching the smallness of things. The unfurling and unfolding that was done in secret. Heaven wasn’t flashy and that’s why I never understood her back then. She didn’t shout from street corners, she didn’t need the printed hand-outs and she didn’t do well under inspection. She liked to be gazed upon.

I tried to run from sadness but Heaven dwelled in sadness too. It’s the last place I thought to find her. I told Heaven, I know why she likes it here. Because this is the part where it all comes together. The silent film pregnant with subtext. You just feel it. Heaven is like that too. More of a feeling than a place. But not a feeling either.

I made my way back to the cabin. I knew I’d been led up the mountain and it felt good to be faithful to a beckon. I told Heaven I’d be back.

She smiled and said, “Okay honey.”

Till next time,