Stories From Home

Walking on my body is so scorching that only selected survivors retain their fertility here. Thereby, merely larvae born from the infertile maintain their life force. Yet, they go through a process of living death: towards nothingness. Up above, I can still hear dry air quietly burning faster than anything else around me.

I am, but have always been and shall remain, a sand desert essentially unchangeable, in perpetual fusion with a drought that has now become my curse and fundamental fact. Without clearly identifying anything specific or being able to receive assistance through the visible lives of lizards or scorpions, I imagine myself under the domination of those who are already dying. But there is one image by which I found courage: yesterday's desolate rain devoid of reverence came from more northern places so suddenly that animals concealed away rustled out again, relieved into their briefly secured space. Rain falls from a distant past, outpouring towards this arid landscape populated only by creatures on their way to death.

One night, I experienced heaven above. Dry winds that make me suffer now had clear voices! They seized and focused upon my every granule. The land is destroyed. In the place where it once was, a gigantic desert remains with no possible reconciliation between its myriads. Here time has ceased acquiring new forms: nothingness itself contains the most essential truth running through its ethers. A huge limited universe engulfed in the emptiness beyond the end, at last, an empty future existing alone.

In this fevered hour, the burden of invisible chains binds and chokes me.

Beneath the suffocating skies, I feel the colors of existence fade, as once vibrant hues now lie eclipsed.

Shadows stifled in the airless void.

And as the earth beneath me cracks, the chasm widens, swallowing the remnants of transient blooms.

The beasts retreat, recoiling from this atmospheric curse.

In this tenuous equilibrium of forces, delicate moments stir like nascent dreams.

The fauna and flora pulse with resilience.

Deeper truths emerge: within the folds and crevices of my ancient skin reside an unwavering fortitude and the capacity to dance with life itself.

A new dawn blossoms across the horizon, painting the sky with possibility.

This fragile balance, a tender tightrope, urges life to teeter on the edge of bloom and decay.

My creatures find solace, adapting as they must to the whispers and sighs of the air around them.

The fire has penetrated and swept through the whole swaths of my body. I am consumed. I became ashes not long ago, bright red volatile matter flowing towards the ocean killing all the leftovers of incandescence. There is no reason left to put it into words except that death passes through here with its hideously magnanimity. Plants are burning up, animals are seared on their feet by what seems like a viscous heated surface.

The air became thick and heavy. Everything loomed up with no clear contour, devoid of lightness and transparency. Days passed by without the sun showing itself so much as a pale disk on the horizon. There were no crows to herald it in the fullness of its radiance, just anxious silence.

But now, when I touch my branches, I nearly shed tears from pure joy: I am relieved to have something absolutely firm again and see once more trees standing perfectly upright. But when will things bear fruit? Is this forest strong enough yet for its flowers?

It is a sunny day and I am alive!

My core shatters, convulses, and writhes in molten sobs, searing, igniting, setting ablaze the emerald. Flames lick the limbs of ancient trees, consuming them.

Oh, the piercing screams of flora and fauna, I, the conductor of an orchestral catastrophe! I, the unwilling creator.

Streams of burning substances forging new paths through lacerated land, marking me mutant, malformed. Tormented by my own bowels, the eruption of forsaken birth.

The fire within, a howling symphony as the sun rebels fleeing into hiding, draped by the cowl of darkness. Engulfed by an insatiable heat, cannibalizing landscapes and ceaseless tides, I am cloaked in shadows. Shackled, held captive by the relentless tethers of my geological heritage.

The surge unfolds, erratic, wild. The fetid gasses, morbid emissaries of torment, ascend. The magma within me, a deranged tempest, seeks to rupture my boundaries raging against the immutable, the indomitable rocks. My beauty is now masked by a miasma of destruction. A harrowing urge for metamorphosis grips me.

Inexorable, this furnace of fury. Veins of molten rock pulsated beneath my surface, seething with impatient vigor, yearning to shatter my foundations and be witnessed by the world above.

My body, with each eruption carved new scars, irreparable fractures. The serpent slumbers in my core, blind but unrelenting, thrashing against the confines of my boundless cradle.

Chaos collides with harmony to the rhythm of nature.

The earth cannot hide its gentleness behind the ocean's sheer stability. I always keep the same shape towards my adjacent lands, and our waters caress each other with such ancient gestures that everyone knew about before our wide blue beauty began.

Little by little, life floats towards me, bringing its splendid silence in fronds that shine beneath the water. The moon is hard to find tonight because she dipped too deeply into some horizontal abysses. Looking at my calm waves does not convey gloom but rather a desire for movement; it means being turned inward. My emerald shores can be seen from below and above. And who told you that angels didn't nestle down here?

I'm a marine mirror in the twilight, not entirely clear or translucent. In the flood of waves splashing themselves over me, flashes pass, innumerable. Astound yourself with this spectacle in which I could only go on daring. The broadening landscape seen from afar tells stories under the stars: tell them you are vulnerable! Occasionally some slowly-arriving ship seems troubled by my first little sighs, and firmament becomes liquid flesh above my soft currents. And then a short wave lifts up to ask for something until it gets what it wants.

I defy the foam and flee before it despite the harshness of the wind. Suddenly, a wave slipped from nowhere into my mass and the water suddenly turned dark. Sky's stripes spread lightning which lies on my shores. Borders between distant coasts disappear and seas grow larger reaching for their ultimate peace - a new phase upon another wave.

I am the heart of the city, a natural sanctuary. All its people's souls are nestled in me.

My branches sway in the rain with heavy gusts of wind. Liquid glistens on my leaves. Time throws its green into gold; time luxuriates over me. I still exist amid alterations as these human beings pass by - they are either eternal presences, place-holders today or absolute future enemies.

I languish amidst traffic noise. My glory has been obscured. The city has grown around me, besieging my vision at sunrise. It looks to be the end of the Earth where I stand on the high ground beneath this thin veil of mist, but dawn is coming to color the eastern sky red.

My tall trees shelter my foliage from an oppressive sun. Among its varied shades, there dwells a vitality that heals wounds too old for hope. The air within shaking leaves the simple melodies of trees.

I am a green oasis. I breathe gently, bounded by walls where creeping shadows spell eternity; my past and future merge into one moment. I am suddenly undergoing a new birth. There are fresh white flowers in my spirit like drops of dew.

I feed myself with puddles eager to be lakes. I need to revisit each curve formed by the river that grows and flows beneath me. My grass and other greenery grow. Flowers do blossom like fragile thoughts that pass lightly through their special time, scattering color amongst faded emotions.

A dream watches from behind every thought. I am unable to see myself or know what others think when they look at me.

Bees hover, forgetting their body dissolves into honey, and an echo pervades forests. Soft melodies behind everything implore an absent god. A pale moon is high in the azure skies within the clarity of night.

I exhale. Oh! How life sweeps everything along like some anonymous current dragging corpses. Humanity is nothing but rivers blocked by imaginary rocks waiting for their chance.

My vegetation quivers.

My crystal lakes ooze.

I am dreaming.

I become lush. My lymph surges vigorously within itself: freshness springs forth everywhere under cover of darkness as if from secret fissures within the trees’ bark; dissolved atoms travel happily through each leaf before evaporating harmlessly towards infinity. My leaves cover all the areas of me that face directly onto the sky – and those are many. Hardly a leafless spot remains on any side. Now listen: l heard, at dawn, through my maze of branches, the approach of rain.

I discovered my rootlessness. I don't know what tree or bush will bear me tomorrow. I want to take it all in because there may not be another chance. What has happened? I have never known until now how I became ill – being such a healthy tree, you see! How could I ever have supposed I had fallen under some curse or spell? Or worse! It is cold today; when will the flood come?

Toward evening a vivid phosphorescence begins to whiten the undergrowth with hallucinations of light and motion. Here, false summer seems ready at last to burst into life; there, autumn's shadows lengthen too fast. Everything vibrates.

Lymph rises, the humid wind revives my body! A sharp sensation invades me: air is born of the union of fire and water; it is autumn, and I sense that it rains from above. Listen, today l planned to burst into song, shouting out the ineffable grace that surrounds me. The many-layered texture of my soil also shifts to invite it: enabling the tree roots to sink deeply into strata even half a meter below the ground, making it easier for rainwater to seep down. It all goes better upon each new, wealthier season.

I am still during the heat of the day, and at dusk, my sea breeze stirs me. My stones have aged, rusting under the burning sun, but this incipient coarseness only gives them more beauty.

I incorporate everything in myself and enhance it all - though not without a cost: In a number of hotspots, my denizens turn their back on nature's renewal and plunge into economic growth as if it were salvation itself - each one seems overcome by fatigue on this side or that.

I live with a sense of disaster spreading; what law is there for me? What my soil presents is a savage disputing on the essence of water.

I am clearly losing much more than anyone noticed: I am mourning my weakening surface.

I never grow either tender or angry without sending an exact wind warning to each blade of grass that is going to bend here tonight - it must be said, I always start before anything has even budded.

For how many millennia has my heat ravaged everything? There was no escaping me back then. From a distance, you can say that this land cracked within itself and couldn't bear its solitary presence anymore.

What fear is this, my world?

Despair has entered here now from the southeast; it strengthens itself in the surfeit of stone along its journey through me.

Land of confusion and crime, I despise myself for having borne them too long. It is easy for me today to embrace whoever goes by here because everyone wants me.