There is a tree filled hilltop in back of an old farmhouse where an outcropping of rock opens to the sky and birds play in the air over the valley. There is a small point that juts out into a lake where the sun seems to rise and set and water glistens twice a day. There is a doorway with a ledge that looks out on the street. There was a house by the highway but it burned down and took a blossom tree with it. There is a desk by a window. Any place can be home.
Places speak to me. They ask me to stay or leave. They are far more consistent than people. Sometimes people want to see you and sometimes they turn you away. A wanderer learns the places that almost always ask you to stay. The ones that can heal you and share your joy. The ones where you blend in. They are part of our memory but they are steady as rock.
I wonder about when my memories seem to come from outside of me. They are seldom intruders and sometimes just need to visit. Plants and trees are like that. They cannot come to you but they need you to come to them. Maybe it is simply a need for connection. Maybe they recognize something in you that has touched them. Maybe they are messengers through time. Is that related to what we call de ja vu?
The other day I thought that perhaps they are forms of reincarnation. Maybe ancestral traits are manifestations of the reincarnations that we are. I don’t believe in popular reincarnation, where everybody gets to be Cleopatra or Alexander the Great. But maybe some lives have been so barren that we stuff their reincarnations deep so that they can never surface.
When the feel in the air or the light filtering to the street embrace you like a homecoming, and you have never been to that place before and have this one time to meld with it. When this one time, place, or creature melds with you and both ingest like sustenance, something special happens. Something deep in you responds. What is that instant of creation?
Sometimes I think it is in my DNA. I wish I knew more about the nature of DNA. I studied its effect on learning for years. But it was moving too fast and changing into its components, like the atom or fleeting love.
Chromatin has my interest today. It is a substance consisting of DNA and protein. It is part of our chromosomes. Is it the dwelling of our ancestors? Scientific articles say that it is essential in maintaining the function of memory cells throughout the life of the organism. Is it possible that they go further? Do they speak to generations yet to come through their propagation? Is it an expression of reincarnation?
That all sounds so farfetched. It is like a desire for eternity.
Places are relatives but different because the life of the organism is undetermined. It is more of an ecosystem than creatures appear to be, but that is only on the surface of things. In some realities, creatures are all echo systems. The purpose of the system is survival. Metamorphosis comes into the picture. A place can be reborn, and I guess so can a person. A place can not seem to remember who it was and neither can a person. But was can be perceived.
Our memories are also in our senses. All of them can transport us through time and distance. Sensory memory. Isn’t it clearly transported in other creatures who have the innate sense to migrate to a specific place they have never been? A part of them may have been there before. I like to think that it happens with plants and trees too. How does it look in people?
If everything is connected, mustn’t science connect with spirituality? Mustn’t conscience connect with the soul? Must’s they all connect with the senses? May they all not connect through generations?
Some things are so primitive that they are complex. Does the nature of the primitive seem to be among them?
Does science not reveal the microscopic structure and megascopic structure to be related? Or is it just our perceiving the surface of things more closely and from farther away than ever?
My chromosomes have taken a detour with me; they’re haven’t gone anywhere. Unless there is some other way to pass along my chromatin? To become part of what appears to be the fiber…
When I reach out for these answers, I am met with only the sense of be here now. The rest will work itself out.