So here we are, this is what we look like. Recognise yourself? Erect. Full. Fulsome. Grounded. Variegated. In bloom. One. And many. Many in one. It’s the way we have come to being here, like this. Branches sprouted from a single root and trunk. Leaves sprung on many branches sprouted from a single root and trunk.

That’s who we are. Not all alike, but all part of a splendoured thing that is one. Look at it!

We used to. I don’t want to sound like someone with water on their brains that has trickled down and also rendered me not just wet but rather deluged behind the ears, but there you are. We used to. And then we embraced other ways of looking, and as a result we began to recoil from the embrace that came to us as naturally as the way the root embraces the earth (or the other way round), or branches embrace the trunk, or leaves embrace their branches and embrace each other too. Without the need to proclaim, hey, we are doing something special here! That was the way things were, the natural way of things. Which no longer are wanted or required or encouraged to be the natural way of things.

And so some things like these things may happen. We began to look at each other and then we began to pick the other and then we began to tell the other, you are the other, you are not me. And then we began to argue, a sort of tuu-tuu, main-main, you know, that is how it is shorn of the frills, tuu-tuu, main-main! Who are you? And who are you? Why are you? And why are you? Will you get off? But why should I? Who said you belong? And who said I don’t?

And so that’s how we began to shout and scream, and those who were more sounded louder. And then we began to point and poke and those who were more pointed and poked more. And then we began to snatch and stab and those who were more snatched and stabbed more. And then we began to tear and throw and those who were more tore and threw more. And the more this tumult pirouetted, the more it churned and chucked, until it came to an unmaking of natural things. To a shredding. To a shaking and a shuddering. To a creaking and a snapping. To a falling. To a dwindling. To a stripping. To an ugliness that wasn’t meant to be. But an ugliness which is.

Do your willing, but do well know

Not all good things come for free

We can use the shade, bro to bro

Or we can hang from the tree.