The Fullness of My Being

I led her by her hands into the garden I have become. I had no idea why she wanted to see it– I knew the garden by heart, and there was nothing beautiful in it.

First, I took her to a flower patch near the edge of the garden. An ill tended patch of nameless, withering flowers. I thought she’d lose interest, so we can quickly get out of the garden. But she looked at it, and said, quietly, “it’s beautiful”.

“Right…” I rolled my eyes, and looked at the sorry flower patch with some contempt. To my surprise, I saw it exploding with colours! Pink roses, red roses, white poppies, red tulips, marigolds, and magolias of splendid beauty. I didn’t know all these flowers grew together.

“Show me more,” she said.

So I took her a little deeper into the garden. We stopped in front of two giant trees. One was upside down, its roots extended into the sky, extracting nourishment from whatever little moisture there was in the air, and its foliage buried deep into the ground, depriving itself of light. The other was missing half its trunk, so its floating foliage shriveled because its roots couldn’t provide any nourishment for its thriving.

“Sorry, these trees are a bit… awkward,” I apologized, with a bit awkwardness, “I might have planted one of the seedlings upside down. And I forgot to water them for some years when they grew.” She looked at the trees, and found herself puzzled. “They look perfectly normal to me,” she said. I looked at the trees again, and sure enough, they were upright, complete, and bursting with health.

“Show me more,” she said.

My head was spinning a little. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“Show me more,” she said.

So we walked together, deeper into the garden. We came before an abyss we had to cross. Only a rickety bridge spanned over the yawning darkness. “Please, PLEASE do not look down into the darkness,” I begged her before we crossed the bridge. I held her hand, and she chose to close her eyes, as I led her over the abyss, so she saw nothing of its darkness– all she felt was the moistness in my hand, its trembling, and its warmth.

So she opened her eyes again, and smiled at me. I saw the grass on both sides of the abyss grew and grew, covering over its bottomless depth.

“Let’s keep going,” I said.

So we passed by a tree bearing glowing orange fruits. She asked me what they were. I told her that the tree fed on my hopes. The fruits taste like sunshine, but the seeds are incredibly bitter. She stood on her tiptoe and strained for a fruit. She picked the biggest she could reach. I took over the fruit, splitted it open, and tried to remove its seeds the best I could. But the seeds were tiny and transparent, so I missed a few.

When the fruit touched her lips, I’d swear that it glowed a little brighter. It was probably my imagination playing tricks on my mind. She said she didn’t taste any bitterness. The seeds, she said, tasted like almonds. That’s impossible, because the seeds, as I said, are incredibly bitter. It must have been her imagination playing tricks on her mind.

We sat under that tree for a long time. When we were rested and ready to leave, the rotting fruits on the ground came alive, and imbued the air with a drunken aroma full of life.

“Let’s keep going,” I said.

So I decided to take her to the place where I define myself. To get there, we must pass through a narrow passage that had clocks growing on the cliff walls.

Even at some distance from the entrance, I could hear the cacophony of grandfather clocks chiming, cuckoo clocks chirpping, digital clocks beeping, analog clocks ticking. Each clock marked a different time. There was one that counted down to the time of my death, one that chimed each time I ate a grape, another that ticked with my heart, yet another to my sense of her breathing, and so on.

I hated going through the passage. I never could make sense of anything with the thousands of clocks drowning out my thoughts in total noise.

I entered the passage with some reluctance. But the moment we stepped across the threshold, the clocks, thousands of clocks, swung in synch in an instant, tick-tick-ticking in perfect rhythm. And as we went deeper and deeper into the passage, the ticking became slower and slower. At the end of the passage, in front of a cave, it stopped.

“Let’s keep going,” I said.

So we were surrounded by complete silence in the cave, except the echoes of our footsteps and breathing. What I wanted to show her, was a shrub about waist high. Each of its leaves a mirror that reflected myself in a different perspective, and with a different distortion. I often went into the cave to examine its leaves, and each time, I’d find new pieces of my complete self.

I brought her to where the shrub was, and lit the torches I had around it, so that the shurb was engulfed within the flames of its self-reflected light. This was so she could see the fullness of my being. She looked into the shrub and gasped,

“This is me! More beautiful than I had ever known!”

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