.23 roots

his name always makes me smile.

mr GOLIATH.

his stature was enough to make you scared,
i'll tell you that.

and dressed in a dark suit,
with leopard skin over one shoulder,
the airport attendants were certainly right to call him
...chief.


he once said to me.
he peered down over his spectacles
gesturing with a flattened palm,
and he said,
you have a different spirit.

a different attitude,
caleb-esque,
not afraid of the giants.

maybe he just liked the grapes.

(i'd have gone for the grapes).

well, let's at least pretend for now that my intentions were honest.


so,
a different spirit.


different...

different, lonely?
different, isolated?
different, abnormal?
different, outcast?
different because being different is in fashion?
that is, different like everybody else.
that is, everybody being different in the same way
from the one person who isn't different,
leaving everyone
the same.
that is, leaving the one that didn't try,
didn't change,
maybe simply just didn't even notice,

actually,
different.


i don't know.
maybe that's a warning to become more self-aware.
or maybe it's too late.


i'd like to think
it could be said
that somehow,
perhaps,
anyhow,
we all have a different spirit.

like peas
or hundreds and thousands
dropped on the floor,
and splaying out in all different directions.

different spirits whizzing off at unique yet deliberately random tangents.

whizz.

whizz shoot whistle whang pffft.

yeowww.



i was crying this one day.
my own particular different had taken me on its own way.
far away.
tangented off with a pooof and a crack.

and someone told me this;

that it's all about the roots.

you see,
botanically speaking,
a pot plant is limited to the size of its pot.
its home, even.
if our dear pot plant wishes to grow beyond these limitations,
it may only do so if it is repotted.
and here's where the ouch comes in.
it must be uprooted,
jangled and shaken,
up and down and side to side,
starved from its damp cosy home,
which must be repossesed,
as the poor and bewildered leafy being
is served
an eviction notice.
yet...
replanted,
repotted,
in a new pad,
with extra room,
maybe another ensuite or a patio perhaps,
it's released.
it's freed.
our pot plant can expand, it can develop, it can grow,

life can continue.


uprooted.
tangented off to an uncomfortably new pot,
and an unhomely new home,
but my friend,
for good reason.



so,
right now what we have
is all our individual different spirits
each with their own roots
being green fingeredly
shuffled around
to our grated disdain.

hmm.


but,
i think i've figured out
a slightly more exciting resolution
to our perpetual uprootation.

To each is a goal to which Allah turns him; then strive together (as in a race) Towards all that is good. Wheresoever ye are, Allah will bring you Together. For Allah Hath power over all things.

The Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali translation, 2. Al-Baqara, 148.

it's not that we simply just end up in bigger and bigger pots all dispersed across a silented global greenhouse.

instead,
and this is another of these don't-ask-me-how moments,
the last page of the book
involves each one of us,
roots and all,
ending up in
one
big
pot.

the uprooting ended,
the dispersion rebounded,
retangented back to the whole
before any messing was done.

i imagine that
by that time
we won't need to be repotted for any more growth,
because we'll finally revel in fullness together-
and i almost feel some kind of captain corelli intertwined-roots cliche about to torment this resistant strain of wandering.

but,
there it'll be.

kind of like a garden, i guess.