The Path, this Path I know so well

I know this path so, so well.
It is a narrow path which has been dug by constant usage from cyclists, horses, cows, foxes, squirrels. Over time, its surface has become smooth and comfortable; it is a very pretty path. The soil is dark brown and walking in it by any weather has created high sides to it, just like water would in a river.

I know exactly all the path's bends. I could follow it the eyes closed.
In fact, when I take it, I KNOW.
It is as if this path is part of me. It doesn't change except getting slightly deeper and more concave with time. Nothing grows on it, because it is constantly used, except at certain places,where a few bits of grass manage to survive the stamping.

I know when it turns right after the juniper berry bush. I can feel it and know "Ah, this is that right turn again"
Sometimes, I wonder whether it is the right thing, to have a right turn there. What if it was wrong?
It can't be that wrong, since it is where it has always gone. It is safe.
It may be turning, in theory, the wrong way, but it suits me fine.
Don't worry about it turning right, I tell myself. Soon, the left bend with the little tree hanging on the side is going to appear.I like looking at that little hanging tree very much.

Sometimes, I wish the path would change, because looking back, I know, that really, this right turn really shouldn't be there, it goes against the big huge tree which is being tripped onto and whose roots are getting damaged because they are very tender and fragile. Could I dig the path around it? But it seems much effort. I will just, personally, try to avoid tripping on the roots and stamping on them. But of course, sometimes I forget and walk over them. It doesn't really matter, it will be a good few moons before the tree collapses, but it will eventually, due to its roots breaking up and changing its balance.

Though...How can I be so sure of it? Lately, the tree's damage seems more evident. I don't speak to it, I think it is a bit of a stupid tree to be so fragile. If it was a proper treely tree, then it would have strong roots, like any tree worthy of its name.
What I didn't know till recently, is that it is a special tree. If its roots are so fragile, it is because this tree has a magical aspect about it that other trees don't have...
In fact, none of the other trees in the world have this special power. It is why it has this extraordinary sensibility to being tripped onto. It rambled at me very often that it had special abilities. I didn't believe it, but now I do.

I love walking this path.
Lately, the trees and bushes around it have grown much bigger. The path itself has become more narrow, and I cannot help but realising that there is something worrying happening to it.
I walk it even more often than before, to check its state. And as well as getting deeper, it is now just wide enough for a skinny elf like me to pass through it. Foxes barely can. Bicycles have given up using it many moons ago.

Brambles are also growing across it, they like it when nobody disturbs them and decorate it across of their pretty red and green stalks.
I do not understand why the path keeps on narrowing though, everyone knows I am the owner of the path, and with my power of Elf, I have asked it not to change and it should listen.
Maybe I overestimate myself in thinking that paths were just created by nature, for me to have an easy life. But I am not supposed to know that. So I keep pestering at the change and get well frustrated at it; when I get frustrated, I tend to play tricks on passing animals and humans, which is very entertaining!

Today, I was enjoying the path again. I decided to stop halfway through it, to rest in one of my favourite spots, that I used to sit in regularly, but had not been able to as it had been a very cold winter..
The warm spring is there today, and the secret side of the path is glowing with new shoots of ferns, forget-me-nots, little white flowers, and very soft grass, which is a delight to sit in.

I think about the path. What to do to stop it completely disappearing? Have I done wrong in the last years to contribute to its fall? I have been slowly more aware of its change, and being aware of it only made it worse.
Or maybe that was just its natural progression.

A while ago, some nasty things happened to me in this path. Since, I know I am limited as to what I am able to do in it. For example, I know now that I can't happilly dance on the path at full moon, because it is the Sorcerer's time and they are all there, well scary, around their marmites, casting spells at passing people. Fortunately, they aren't interested in me, and would just run after me with their sticks, shouting with their sour voice for me to get the heaven out of here. So, from then on, I avoid dancing on the path at full moons, which was my most favourite time because it is so resourcing to my elf's powers. They may not be interested in me, but I do not want to take the chance and be transformed into a stone, or worse, one of them!

Then, it was during the afternoons that I realised I wasn't supposed to sing when I was walking in the path, because it was the time the lazy black birds take their naps, and if I sung, they would throw tree bark at me, and it hurt! I stopped singing very quickly. I am not that stupid. I just walk quietly, because they are not going to prevent me to be in my path!

The worst thing that happened was once, a few moons ago. It was lunch time for me, and I was passing near the fragile tree. I didn't know that the tree was magic, then.
I sneared at it, noticing yet another of its roots, damaged, which had been nored at by a rabbit.
The tree asked me for help, once again, and said he had a little favour to ask me. He always calls on me and asks me annoying things, and usually I just ignore him. I have things to do.

That day, the tree said he wanted me to give him a little bit of love because he was feeling very weak.
I didn't stop, and said that I was too busy, because it was time for my lunch. . The tree was very angry, and with its magic, after I had eaten my lunch, he punished me. He gave me a horrendous indigestion. I was ill for days! And since, I cannot eat lunch on that path for fear to have terrible belly pains. The tree has stopped asking me for help.
Since that incident, I decided I would definitely avoid anything to do with this love thing, because love means punishment and indigestion.
I am not a giving, or Self-service love creature, I just like playing and dancing, mocking life.

I don't quite know what this love thing other beings brag about is, anyway.. I am sure it is something very important, since that tree was asking for it, but I don't think I have it in me. I could have said to him that I simply didn't know what it was, and couldn't help him, but I quite like being pretentious, I won't admit there are some things I am ignorant about! I don't really care, anyway.
I am happy in my life, walking my path.
Well, I would be happier if only my freedom in it wasn't being so restricted recently!

As I sat there, relaxing in my little secret place, thinking about all those things, this beautiful owl flew by and stopped on a branch near me.
I asked her what she was doing there, it was daytime! She should be asleep! Had I been too loud and her little annoying ones had been awoken by my talking? I liked being loud! It is who I was and I was not changing for anyone! Even the trees liked it! See? they even threw their leaves at me in autumn because they were so thankful I am here! And why are you looking at me like that?

The Owl looked at me quietly for a while, with her round eyes. My chatter died down and I looked back at her.
With a gentle but musical voice, she told me a story.
It was a story of love. A story of hurt. A story so full of passion. I could barely understand her, because she spoke in Owl language, and me, I don't live the same things as she does.
I didn't understand neither what she was on about. It all sounds very nice, but what did she mean?
The Owl told me about all this intensity which is around the path. How electric it is. She said that if I didn't change the way I was walking, the path would die and no creature could ever pass through it, so intense it was becoming, and so deadly to any passing soul.
It wasn't my fault, was it?
No, she said. But you walk this path so so often, you are the one who has most power in it because you think about it and are in it so much. Because of that, it makes you the destiny's master of that path.
I felt slightly inflated when she said that. Me? Power? Well, I know I have power. But I always thought the path was mine anyway. I was a bit confused.

She said that it was all going to happen on the full moon, when all the waters would be affected from the tides and that full moon was this very night.
I replied that I couldn't possibly walk the path tonight, it was full of witches,(Who still managed to use the path, because they are witches and they don't care) and I was way too scared of telling them what I thought of them! The Owl said that as long as I would stay near the fragile tree, I would be invisible to them and I would be safe. Her last words were a recommendation about being true to myself, which I didn't quite understand.

At that point, she left. I felt a bit annoyed, I had forgoten to ask her about the tree?! That silly tree had tricked me, it knew I had no empathy towards it. It probably wanted me harm as well and would transform me into sap, to give him back the power he lost from all those cyclists and people and animals, and me, walking all over its fragile roots.

My path, that I knew so well...I lied back down in the grass and dreamed.
I had a little time before dark. Why had I, when I first discovered the path, always taken that left turn and then even though I realised the coming right turn was wrong, still involved myself in it? It created this unbalance, and now the path was twisted against itself and was crumbling away.
Did I forget about being truthful to myself? But what did truth mean? I didn't grasp the concept of truth, or lie, towards myself or anyone.
It was just unexistant. Maybe it was because I didn't know what it mean,that I was able to take THE right turn.

I was me, after all, and I didn't need to wonder and ask myself if I was true or not, Yes, I was just me, I was Elf.
Now I was aware of it, but I still took those right turns. I knew when they were coming, I knew they were wrong but I still took them. They felt so familliar. Why was I always walking them alone?
I remembered now, why I started walking the path. It was because I had heard that at the other end of the path, in the plains, was a big and pretty lady elf, whom I was secretly hoping to meet. Though, it never happened because when I got to the end of the path, I was ennjoying myself so much in it that I always turned around to walk it again, and then went back home.
I hadn't realised I did this, actually.
Sun knows what had happened with the pretty lady elf.
Maybe she was already taken to some other, much uglier elf than me. But for me, the most important was walking my path.

I fell asleep in the shade; my secret place was so comfortable, and there were no magic tree, witches or annoying blackbirds around to spoil the peace.

I dreamed.
I saw letters. I saw phones. I saw the Internet. I saw communication, words, and I saw I was a human. A Human?!!! What?
I was horrified to realise I was a human. They are so ugly with their small ears! I was a bit ashamed of myself, my ears were particularly small.
I was one of them, one of those social animals that tread the world and build enormous churches to pray in on sunday mornings, show adoration to some human god who had been writen about in some human books I was taught at school.

I still wasn't sure of what love was, but I fell in love, like other humans. I coudln't help it. It was some sort of mystical, eotional, physical trembly feeling. This felt like it might well be what the other humans spoke about. Maybe it was love.
I saw their attempts to create lives with aspects they stole from fairy tales, and because I was human also, I tried to fit into them, with them.
I had this compulsive will to be like them.
Fairy tales were very intriguing, they were my favourite stories. They had those creatures like elfes in, and magic witches, that captivated me.

I fell in love, I fell out of love, and before I knew it, I was in love again.
I kept being attracted to some other human being who was just like me.
Well, just like me, but really, wasn't.
They are supposed be me, and I am supposed to be them, but a huge separation lies somewhere, stopping a proper contact to happen.
Problems from egos, they said.
Ongoing breaking ups.
I was sweating.
What a difficult life!
It was not at all like a fairy tale! Were all those people lying to each other? Was this all just a big illusion of what life should be but in fact wasn't able to happen, at all?

Not happy enough with falling in love with one person,I woke up one morning and felt I was in love with 3 different people. How awful! It wasn't supposed to happen! it must be false!
As life went on, I realised it was different sorts of love. But I still didn't understand it, I could hardly feel it.

Inside me, I slowly discovered an inability to love as others describe it; as well as this inertia in expressing what they call affection.
What was happening? Why wasn't I like other people who can experience love fully? They all seemed to be able to, and their love and understanding was growing with age. I was the only one amongst those millions who coudln't!
Over a few years, as I was experimenting with myself, others and this love, I felt a sort of emotional and expressive paralysis slowly establishing itself inside me.
Maybe I had been genetically modified. Maybe I was an In Vitro. Maybe I was illigitimate. Maybe I wasn't real and I was a dream.

"The tree, the fragile, magic tree..." I understood! It was its fault! What? What was I saying?
Thoughts and images just flashed through my head, followed by a severe migraine. What were those images? Those visions of a very strange tree with soft roots... "which had cast a spell on me the day of the indigestion", "and made me unable to express any love!"
What?
I had to sit down on a chair, my head was spinning.
When I managed to get up again, my first move was towards the first aid cupboard, taking some painkillers. Was I going insane?
I shared what was going inside me with my animal friend, the black and white cat, and he spat at me.
I was obviously not to his taste with my thoughts.

But those visions were right...I was dry like a rock! I couldn't express love! I could hardly feel it! Real love doesn't just last 5 minutes! Something odd was going on inside me!
My falling in love was all in my head and was not real at all! And if it was real, other people couldn't see it! Were they blind to my being? What was I?

I was damnned. I felt it more and more. Everytime I attempted to say those words that humans are meant to say, if they love each other, ["I love you"] the words would stay blocked in my throat.
A few days later, it was typical, I would be in bed with a strong throat infection. I thought it was probably from the words being stuck in my throat, but the doctor kept repeating that it was a bacterial problem. And he must be right since he is Doctor, he knows better than me that just arrived here..

An instance happened when I actually thought I felt love.
It was with someone who appeared more special than the others.
I felt like a charm was going on, and I visualised good events to happen in the future, with him, and that built a solid platform for my potential love to sit upon. It felt strong, powerful. I spent many hours day and night, thinking about him. And it seemed to last more than a couple of weeks, so it was probably love.
Like a flash, I suddenly realised I was slightly aware of what was happening. In a semi-conscious way, I decided to take control of my dream if it was really one.

Plucking all my courage, I managed to say those difficult words to the other human. I, this human with small ears, managing to tell my love to this other person! What a victory!
Though, as soon as I said it, my throat started to bleed.

To my greatest sadness, the other human didn't believe my words of love. I left, rather unwell, rushing to the doctor who couldn't believe I was back, with, he discovered, a very rare and magnificent case of beta hemolytic Streptococcus pyogenes bacterial infection, coupled with Vibrio vulnificus attacking the lining of my trachea.
I wasn't very impressed, I was rather convinved it was all about the expression problem, and the inability to feel love. But I didn't tell him that. Doctors don't like to hear those sorts of things because they are not proven by scientists.

The dream became thick, and I lost the temporary awareness of it.

I sat up in my bed and got rather upset at the situation. What was going on? Was I damned about that as well? Sod any dream, come back on earth, this was real!!
Why, now, was I meant to forever appear indifferent to the others? Why didn't they believe my words of love? Did I look so unloving? Was there something sticking to me?

After that instance, however many "I love yous" managed to struggle out of my throat to the humans that I thought I loved, none of them took it seriously.
One of them even called me a thief! He said I stole his heart and didn't give it back. Was he strange or what? His heart wasn't anywhere else but in his chest!
It was never my intention to steal his heart anyway. I only wanted this human thing to work out with him, and say loving things so I could learn what love actually was.

The problem was that my words felt false to others. Maybe because I was unable to actually express a viable affection. The rigidity about it all spoke for me and made me look distant.

I felt very sad and lonely. My throat was getting better, but I was not in a balanced state. I spent nights crying, not really sure of why I was crying but my body just purging some of those blocked feelings which wouldn't get out.
Why coudln't I exprerience love? I didn't really understand all this happening, all this being a human and living a life... All this dissociations inside me, between my mind who thought life was a dream, my conscious who thought life was real... My body who talked to me but I couldn't listen to; and my soul, if it existed, was just deadly quiet and couldn't get through to my damned heart...
To add on to all that, there were the humans who told me to just get on with life and stop wondering about it. "You will see, true love feelings will come when you meet the right person, Luv", they often said.

I was getting well fed up of being a human. Love just wasn't coming. It was frozen. The tree, the tree was calling...

In the magic the dreams have, I was suddenly relocated to the countryside, and did not wonder for a minute how I had got there, it seemed natural; I walked along some bright green hills.

I walked for ages and arrived to a path, which attracted me. A path hiding under bushes.
I felt this increasingly strong feeling of deja-vu as I looked around me.
I wasn't sure of it, but I felt I knew where this little path was going.

I felt that once, this path had been mine. I may have lived in it.

The memory that came to my memory of the path was different to the reality. I thought that path was wide and cosy, but it was very narrow.
I struggled through the brambles and entered it.
After a left turn, I perceived this very strange tiny being, asleep under a bush.
I didn't look twice, thinking I must have had too many painkillers and probably imagined things. Anyway, such beings don't exist. The scientists prove it all the time.

I walked for a while, or rather, crawled. After a familiar bend, was a right turn. This right turn...What was it with a right turn?

I took it. Once again, a known feeling of fear of having done the wrong thing arose. I was aware of it but this time, couldn't go any other way as the brambles were too dense...
After the right bend.... Was this majestous tree. A Magic tree! I am sure it was a magic tree! And it looked so fragile, just like a magic tree looks like in the fairy tales!

I was convinced it was the tree who had cast this spell on me! It was why I had been attracted up to here! I looked at it, full of apprehension.
The tree was very tall and only had a few leaves; his trunk was bending towards the path, but rather extremely to the right.
I also noticed, with a certain feeling of unease, that his supportive roots were nearly all rotten.

To my human awareness, this tree felt very severe and lonely. It refused to say a word.
Well, I wouldn't have been able to hear him anyway, since I was human and humans can't hear trees talk, but I just sensed it was shut inside himself.

I looked at my Japanese-made sophisticated watch, and it showed me, among other useless things, that tonight was the full moon. I shivered. Memories...

I felt trapped. Trapped in what I thought was a dream but was ending up being reality... I was trapped in this world. Unable to feel and express love.
I snuggled up against the tree, who was now more peaceful, and I gave up any feelings of fear about death. If the tree was to fall, so be it.
His struggle and mine would be over.

I felt some very strange motions happen where my skin was in contact with the tree. It was like a sort of chaotic tidal movement. A fluidic nature; I also felt like a dried up river.

My skin shouted, asking me to take it away from this tree, who was actually sucking away its fluids. I didn't mind. Becoming tree was ok as far as I was concerned. It would be better to be a tree, even a dead one, than a human who can't love and is all fucked up and shared between that many lovers that he wasn't not sure he loved.
Falling in love, I had realised, was only a matter of minutes. Before you knew it, it was finished.
There was no point in it. No purpose except knowing it is available as a sort of complicated and powerless game. I knew falling in love is an illusion thrown upon humans by this all-knowing fog of light.
But what was love, the real love?

As I, this human with small ears, slowly dried up to become part of the tree, I thought about this life. Again and again. The tree was just taking back what I was unable to give him, one day, in what I thought was a previous life.
I told many people about it, but nobody believed me when I said I had a previous life.
Humans seemed to prefer to believe in things like bibles, jesuses and God father things which I thought were so irrational, since they were human-made.
A previous life made more sense to me, there was something happening in this life that stopped me from experiencing; and what else could it be but a karma from the past?
I stopped trying to persuade those ignorant other humans, they were too stuck in the realities they wanted to believe in.
I was sure that, once upon a time, something had happened to me in a forest, something a bit bisarre.
I had been unable to give a needy tree some love, that very day. And I had fell asleep and missed the full moon.
Because of that, I had become human.

And today, my karma was to complete.


A huge crack filled my head and cavities with a shivery and sudden, horrendous noise.


I woke up!
My heart was beating so fast,and as I leaned up on my elbows,I saw I was actually still in my very comfortable little spot, under the bush, on the comfortable grass near the ferns which had grown a lot; but it was rather dark.
A dream ! It was a dream! I wasn't human! I was not tree neither!!! Or was I? I looked around me, shocked and terrified. A shadow, a huge shadow moved slowly, with a lingering noise.
The tree..The magic tree...Was falling.

Now was the time, or never to discover what love was.
With my little legs,(I couldn't remember whther I was elf or human, this dream had mixed me up) I ran to the tree,which seemed to take long minutes, and held one of its uprooted roots down, shouting and crying at it. "Don't die, tree, don't die!"
The tree paused for a second.
"What are you doing here?" asked the tree. "You are supposed to be dreaming,and now you are alive, I cannot suck up the Human energy you were, anymore. Go back to sleep! Can't you see I am dying anyway?"

I felt nothing. I felt desaray, but still, this love thing I had learned in my dream, which I wasn't able to properly experience, was as unknown to me and my body as the feeling of lying or truth.

"Tree", I said. " Do you remember the spell? I wasn't able to love, because of you"


"You weren't able to love because you are an Elf" protested the tree, severely. "I may have cast a spell on you, but you didn't evolve very much, did you. "

This was unfair. I was trying my best...
The only thing I could think about, at this moment between life and death, was about my path.
I had walked it so many times, always in the same way.
I start thinking again about this dream of the human life. The discovery about communication.
Always there had been those emails which at a certain point, became so fluent, frequent, compacted; I felt my flow had become over-powering on the loved one. Always I ended up apologizing for my compulsive need to understand, explain, hear, and comunicate. Was it need for reassurance, maybe?
I had often wondered about the way I dealed with them and as I saw myself act, felt very shy, I coudln't, wasn't really allowed and supposed to want to express so many Words.
I felt smaller because of it, and felt silly to show this needy side which could get obsessive at times.
Very rarely, it wasn't a problem. But eventually, my attraction to the other person would lead that way. I was in this compulsive need to express.
Everytime I recognised obsession, I feared for my feelings and the other person; obsession showed me something was not right, and the relation would eventually break...Just like the tree.
And again, a slight bit of compulsive communication has crept in. Go away! Go away! I must not take that right turn!!!

From that point of the relationship, it always went
the same way. I
knew
it
with my eyes closed.
I met with him. Very rapidly, with no time respect, no learning about the other, with a sense of urgency, some sort of betraying chemical thing happens in this human body and mind. The need for attraction, the need for something which is normal and approved of. The closeness...The physical closeness.
The closeness of 2 beings who (think they) are in love, who are attracted, but realise that they are not as soon as the first problem arises.
Why was it so difficult to understand the concept of love and acceptance, affection?

To make it work, I had to become faithful. Faithfulness is this strange little box in which you are not supposed to look at others, flirt with them, sleep with them, and in some extreme extends, have to even hide yourself away so they won't look at you.
Faithfulness is wonderful. I loved being faithful, it appealed to my strong inner beingness.
I found that the most beautiful being were always the most respectful ones, but would that mean that the most beautiful humans would be the ones who is most most faithful to their word? Ah, but they can be faithful to their word, without needing to be faithful to their spouse, as long as they didn't say the words.

The thing about faithfulness, is that when it was all finished, what a joy to feel free again and feel able to be attracted to anyone and if need was, to be able to be close to them on a temporary or random basis.
I enjoyed very much taking my "freedom" by the hand and doing with it what I felt I was not supposed to do, experimenting with love.
Not to have to bother anymore with rigid faithfulness was delightful.
Faithfulness eventually, felt like a prison. It was beautiful, but it could only live for a short time.

Affection was so alien and was the next place where the path lead me; affection was forced because it was what I was supposed to do and had learned. I was very aware it was very weak. I didn't understand the need for affection other humans seemed to display so much. It seemed a bit like an invasion to me.
So, as a good human, I worked on my affection.
Worked-on affection is ok, but it is not the best affection. You know it will always be a bit forced. It is learned from looking at others behave with the ones they love. Learned from working on the self to repeat the same movements and gestures.
This affection was far from perfect and loving...

Communication was the only thing which could save that, but the closeness which happened made the whole relation get in a box. Acting a certain way. Not being able to, or feeling it is not allowed to communicate anymore. A good couple is the one who can make concessions and go on about their daily lives without needing to work on problems. Well, it seems what others were doing.
Communication, which was so fluent before, starts dying.
At times when it didn't die, it became uncontrollable. Possessive. The safe distance kept was invaded and the lack of space suffocated me.
I did not understand how to deal with just one person. It was safer to be alone or with many others...

The status lowered. The expectations of a certain behaviour, either by the other party or by the self, came up. The awareness of this expectation being present, but not being able to take the left turn. Playing a role. .
Wanting this relationship to work, so desperately. Why desperately? Because of wanting to feel so normal? To be like other people who are in love, and are still together 10 years on because even though they original love has faded, it has been replaced by a caring and truthful relationship.

It is only life, I said to comfort myself. What does it matter if one cannot manage to be as regular as the others?
Maybe it is not for this life to experience duality with another soul.
If this was wanted so much, it would have been done ages ago in a mother country...

Why wasn't I able to accept that I didn't need to act like the others in order to feel accceptable by Society?
Why was it so hard to accept that to sustain such experience with those mysterious love affairs is enormously difficult and is not necessary?
To accept that maybe love is trapped somewhere, and would have come out if it felt safe to do so?

My dreams stopped before I could act on it. Now, I was stuck between a dying human, an endangered elf and a suicidal tree who wasn't able to show itself love and had nobody to share his secrets with...


The word, it is all in the word. The word is the path.

The path I know so well, in my brain. It is like a Tranchee. A Trench. It goes round and round and round. And the tree is falling. How many times will I be able to walk that path? Why are there witches on that path who stop me from dancing? Why is there a tree that I cannot love?
Why do I always feel the same everytime, knowing so well...How it will finish?
It feels like a spell. A spell cast... but that I am also perpetuating, powerless, as I watch it repeat the same pattern,
every time.


I do not know what happened to the tree. When I woke up from all those dreams, I was not there anymore.
I was everywhere, I was awareness, but I wasn't mind.

It is life. It is a dream. It was real. Or not.