Excerpt from Chapter Five of

The Nostalgic Future

In July, the sun became my best friend.

I remember having been a sun worshipper as a teenager, like most teenagers from Gen X, before we learned to fear Nature, but as an adult I had forgotten its allure. We had all been taught to evade the sun instead of revere it, but somehow this propaganda against the sun wasn’t quite ingested properly by my generation’s collective intuition. We had been fed some plastic, phony thing and had been unable to internally process. We had mindlessly regurgitated the indoctrination about slathering our skin with toxic chemicals and staying out of the sun, ignoring the obvious that all human, animal and plant life would be obsolete without the sun. We had been told to stay inside by our betters, and yet we could not keep ourselves from basking in the beach’s shining, starlike waves. We could not ignore the draw like a magnetic pull of the feeling of the heat of the sand against our skin. We knew the brightness of the sun was our Mother. We must’ve known deep within, in a place we couldn’t even acknowledge to ourselves, that there was something about the sun we just knew was life-giving. And so, we returned to Her again and again, rejecting stories of melanoma and premature aging. We lived for now. We lived for the moment. We were young and stupid, but maybe we were on to something.

The summer after I fell down the stairs I began spending my free time lying on a large floaty in our pool. I stared up at the magnolia tree that had grown immensely tall to the east of the pool, while I warmed myself in the sun, making up for lost time as though returning to a lost lover. I didn’t know why I was doing it, other than the fact that my ankle required me to do a lot of reclining, lounging and lolling about. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stay away from that pool, and I couldn’t take my eyes off that magnolia tree. I would settle myself onto the plastic raft, rearranging my body until the tiny chlorinated waves had worked themselves out, and I’d stare at that magnolia tree as though it was telling me something wordless and enduring. It towered over me by twenty feet or more on the darkened side of the yard. The magnolia tree on the east side of the yard stood somehow impossibly always in the shade, in contrast to the sun I consumed inexhaustibly, lying in the pool in the west. The dark side of the yard was a mystery to me. I had never looked over there before. The depth of the shadows made by the tree obscured some kind of primal story without words, without plot, without human characters.

At the time, I had no idea about the spiritual significance of the magnolia tree. (I had little awareness of the spiritual significance of anything, up until this point.) I did not know that the magnolia tree can stand as the bridge between worlds, its presence both sacred and otherworldly. I did not know that it had been revered by certain Native American traditions as more than a mere “tree,” but rather a living spirit, a keeper of ancient wisdom, and a reminder of the fragile balance between light and shadow. To those who listen closely, the tree whispers secrets that have passed through generations. In the language of the divine, the magnolia’s evergreen leaves and citrusy fragrant blossoms are seen as symbols of eternal life, which is both a blessing and a curse. The magnolia calls to those who seek to understand the mysteries of existence, offering a glimpse of what lies beyond the veil: the Truth.

I was about to discover that the Truth is like Nature and can be found as a result of spending time in nature. I’ve thought about how the Truth is like Nature for a very long time, so hear me out. First of all, what I mean by Truth is wisdom, things that are deeper than words are good at describing. Things that you feel inside and keep hidden from the world because you’d sound like an idiot if you shared them. Things you probably take with you beyond the grave, if there is any place beyond that cold, mossy underneath.

Also, the Truth is like Nature because it is forever. Unconquerable, it can never be killed. It will always regenerate, no matter how it is trampled upon. Nature will go on forever, in some new form. It is a complex system.

The deeper you go off the beaten path, the deeper your understanding of its intricate tributaries, wild and mysterious. It is also a hybrid of beauty and terror. It can seem like a contradiction. The Truth is like Nature, because it can be harsh. It can be frightening. Many people do not want to go there. They are afraid, and they would like to ignore it. Let someone else go there, if they want to, but not me. They will build structures around themselves to hide from it. For some, though, it calls out to them. Those people are almost obsessed with finding it (both Nature and Truth), braving its wildness to discover something that it reveals, something about themselves — about who and what they really are, and what they’re “made of.” It is a beautiful thing to those who have the courage to look at it. And courage it will take.

The Truth is like Nature. It will always be there, waiting for you to have the balls to look closely at it. And it doesn’t need you to “believe” in it. It just is. Both are eternal.

***

That summer, everything in my backyard looked kaleidoscopic to me — super electric, amplified and vibrant. There was some kind of spark around the edges of everything I could see, like a thin lemon yellow light outlining every shape. Colors were more than colors. Brightness was more than bright. Everything was glowing with permanence and vivid consequence. I felt like I was living in a movie. Was this some kind of natural DMT drip I’d instigated inside myself? All the differing tones of greens around me were suddenly very unique and unparalleled. Things glowed. They pulsated. Everything was singing, exultant.

It was almost as if each plant became a living entity, a personality that only I could decipher. I was convinced I knew each of their genders and I started to name the houseplants that summer, a ridiculous practice I have maintained over the years. I spoke to them aloud and I sensed them listening. They were my “babies,” just as much as my dogs were. When it was time to water them, they were beholden and jubilant. They loved me back; I was sure of it. I grasped that they were aware of my energy and knew so many things about me and my life, and its connotations, the meaning of it all, so many things I didn’t even know about myself. I felt like they were really “on my side,” and that they were rooting for me. It was easier to converse with my houseplants than with the magnolia tree, the way it is more natural to have a pleasant conversation with your neighbor versus a Guru. The plants were my personal friends, but the magnolia tree was an enigma, either mute with wisdom I could only guess at or spoke in parables I could never decode.

Staring at her seemed the only logical activity that summer.

Photo: Pamela Marie