Beginnings

This is my most revised bit of writing. I've been redrafting it occasionally since 2005, and this is the first time I've shared it with more than one person at a time. What drives you to share the world behind your eyes? Let me know below.

He had been at the tree for some time now. He’d walked across the beautiful wilderness that had only recently become his home, wandering from his comfortable origins at the bidding of some incomprehensible longing that issued from his chest, and his wandering had brought him to the tree. There, he stopped, and he considered his next move. He rested at the tree and he allowed his mind to unravel.

He remained in that spot longer than one would think possible, but this was a man for whom time meant very little, who had no obligations anywhere else, who until recently knew nothing of death. He knew that there was really no time before that time, and he was right, but soon times would change. Soon, he would move again, move away from that tree and toward the wide world that he never knew, and that would be the start of another time.

So we write. We write because we have more things to say than people to tell, because stories are independent of authors and wish to be told, because writing links the writer to the reader and to the word, and because whether it was the Bodhi or an apple tree makes all the difference in the world.