finding some perspective

week of 11/12/23: the emperor

Lately, I have needed some perspective. Some grounding. I can’t feel my feet, my roots, and so I can’t see properly up high, in my crown. This week, I pulled the emperor. No, I thought, despairing. How can I write about the emperor when I have no perspective at all? A card entirely about perspective.

I combed through my archives and found a tiny essay I wrote before, in February. Perhaps I had more perspective then, in deep quiet midwinter, than I do now. It was good to read those words. So I’m sharing them with you now.

the emperor

High up on my mountain, above where all the other trees cede to the wind and the weather and the ragged soil, there is a tall tree.

I think it knows things. It can see, after all, farther than anyone, even the mountain, probably. I don’t know whether mountains know but I know trees do. That tree is krummholtz: beaten by snow and whipped by wind, so twisted it has grown straight again. That it is tall is a miracle of time and respectful thunderstorms, casting lightning elsewhere.

Sometimes in the morning I hike up just to stare at it because I need to absorb whatever it sees. The tree is the emperor of this mountain. When I touch its trunk, something like smooth low clarity unfolds in me. I remember the natural law and what is upside down in me flips. I recall my own power.

Recall yours, and what you know you can see, high on your own mountain.