What can move one? It is simply so random and yet sometimes so poignant that it becomes like  an inexplicable exercise to attempt to explain the inexplicable. Yet we do it, we attempt to understand the logic of it all, we attempt to understand the process of life, the world, the universe, the body, the mind, and some even the soul.

Yet, having, searched for so much, I am quite amazed by the fact that what brings you total joy, which is different than chemical pleasure originated by chemical release, that joy I am wondering about is of of another kind.  We could attempt to map it in the brain what happens there, and yet it is almost completely futile.

For me, my brain returning to its past capacities gives me some kind of joy.  Yet it is not even that. It is impossible to write about it . The fact that I took my guitar to compose something was a bigger expression of life, than any chemical exam. Those processes are so complex, and yet simple. So what brings me joy is to be in place. It is not simply to be in place, but to be understood, to feel my soul is here as well as it is my body. So rare had it been for me these moments, yet, they are back to me. The beginning of it, is here for me.

So I realise that what gives me joy is to share what I find is so beautiful. It is not to work, it is not to travel, it is a true encounter with the other. Sometimes, what brings total presence is the totally unexpected message of a friend from another world with a poem. And I seat here, to share that, as it was written in his language, I value it more. Since it was translated, it makes me understand it. And I write simply because I must share that poem. It brings me back to Asia, a place where I almost died, yet a place where I love very much.  It gives me joy to share this here, and imagine than other people will like me feel it to.

一棵開花的樹

席慕蓉

如何讓你遇見我

在我最美麗的時刻 為這

我已在佛前 求了五百年

求祂讓我們結一段塵緣

佛於是把我化作一棵樹

長在你必經的路旁

陽光下慎重地開滿了花

朵朵都是我前世的盼望

當你走近 請你細聽

那顫抖的葉是我等待的熱情

而當你終於無視地走過

在你身後落了一地的 

朋友啊 那不是花瓣

是我凋零的心

A blooming tree Xi Murong

“How to make you meet me

at my most beautiful moment.

For this,

I had prayed to Buddha for five hundred years

for making us an earthen fate.

Thus, Buddha turned me into a tree

growing on where you would pass by everyday.

I carefully bloomed fully under the sunshine.

Each flower was the looking forward of my previous life.

When you got closer, please listen carefully,

those trembling leaves were my waiting passions.

When you passed by without noticing,

what had fallen on the full ground behind you,

my friend, those were not leaves

but my withering heart.”

I shared these poem with friends and loved ones I thought I should. And strangely people from all over  the world in spite of their religion were moved as well. So I decided to write. And as I wrote, I realised once again, that just like in the brothers Karamazov I took the path of joy and not truth. Because truth is so unattainable.  More importantly, this path is the path of compassion. Well, my friend comes from Taiwan so I guess it is Tao, it is simply the path…..