by S J Amit
“What do you want from me? I don’t understand!”
“If I tell you that on the day you were born, you arrived here?”
“Leave me alone!” I stepped back.
“It’s not your fault, Julian.” He came near me and grabbed my hand. “You didn’t choose to be born in a place in which you weren’t present for most of your life. Even if you thought that you were always there, deep in your heart you’ve never felt like a part of the faraway land. Some people can’t live in any of the faraway lands without their eternity of existence. And that resides within their pinecone, in the Land of the Mosaic,” he slowly released his grip. “From the moment they were born and until they reach it, they can only exist in a place where there’s no condition for being. Occasionally, they return to their original land in an attempt to live there, until the pain reappears. Throughout their lives, their free spirit wants to reach their pinecone, release the seeds of potential from within it, and their inner truth of themselves. Try to remember, Julian,” he went quiet for a moment. “If I’m not right, then tell me, how did you arrive to the Land of the Mosaic?”
“I don’t know!”
“When did the pain first appear? Haven’t you been fighting it your whole life, every time it transformed and found you again in the faraway land? The hardship, weakness, agony, diseases, loneliness, alienation, the suffering during the battle against the pain, all caused you to occasionally despair from attempting to get rid of it, and to try to live there like that, with the pain. But the more you tried, and the more its appearances multiplied and became more often, the more you doubted the existence of the Land of the Mosaic. Only the pain wouldn’t stop appearing, transforming and being sent again.”
“The pain transformed… and was sent again…” I mumbled, “How do I--“
“That is the language with which your eternal soul speaks to the one-time person that you are. Pain is only the messenger, the messenger to your pinecone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Julian, your pain, it’s only your messenger back to yourself. Back to a life you’ve never lived.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“Well, I’ll ask you again: This pain, did you always have it in the land from which you came?”
I felt suffocated. “Yes. I remember,” my heart was racing, “I remember well.”
He opened the little box and gestured for me to come near him. “This is the transparent color of the spirit,” he pointed inside the box. I didn’t see anything inside. “I can’t know which pinecone is yours, but I can see and hear the free spirits that arrive at the pinecone grove. Once I sprinkle the transparent color over your hands, it’ll be easier for you to notice your pinecone. Once you reach out your hands and hold it, you’ll know that your free spirit recognizes it.”
He pressed the palms of my hands together. Sprinkled a substance out of the box onto them that felt like powder, it fell on my skin and slid into the dips between the fingers, but I didn’t see anything. I rubbed my hands together like he asked me to. “The backs of the hands too,” he said. Except for a feeling of sand, nothing. “Now, take a good look at the pinecones and bring me your pinecone, the one from which I’ll prepare your remedy.” He stuck his hand into the box again, took out a handful and made a movement of flinging it in the air. I didn’t see anything dispersing and I didn’t feel any particles, but a flash of light momentarily appeared through the trees.
I advanced towards the orange glow, which was dimming down. “Approximately here,” I mumbled. A single pinecone stuck out on the ground. Glowing and dimming down.
“Look at your hands,” he called to me. “If you take a pinecone that isn’t yours, the remedy I prepare for you won’t heal the pain, it’ll only make it disappear for a longer time period before it returns.”
I saw another pinecone near a small bush, pink and glowing. I walked over to it, but again I didn’t know whether to take it or not. A big red one sparkled on a tall thin branch. I shook the branches and it dropped to the ground. I don’t know, I thought. A little glowing round one was on the ground, I ran over to it and moved the leaves that had covered it, tried to focus on it, but nothing. A shiny open brown one stuck out high-up above me, I climbed the tree trunk and then the branches until I reached it. I touched it, considered whether to pick it or not. No, no. I continued searching through the trees. Another long white one, I hung on a branch and pulled it. It’s actually pretty, I thought to myself, Maybe? Actually, I don’t think so. A glowing yellow one was near a thick tree root. That one, that one. But immediately another one sparkled from afar. Only a few glimmered with flashes of light, but I had no idea which one of them to pick up.
“How am I supposed to know?” I shouted to him.
“It’s true that there’s a shining light in more than one of them, but the thoughts about what I’d just told you, and the possibility of the pain not going away, they’re confusing you. The fear of suffering makes you compromise at the last moment. Don’t think about what was and what will be. Listen to your free spirit, it needs no words, it always occurs within the present, constantly providing you with a truth that lacks a past or a future. The spirit’s transparent color sticks to your hands and will never disappear. From the moment you find your pinecone and I prepare your remedy from it, you will forever be the owner of your craft. From now on, whatever it is you do, whatever it is you create, your free spirit will reside within it.”
I looked in all directions and he continued talking. “Some pinecones are glowing because your free spirit looked for your eternity of existence within them. You’re talented in that you can bear witness and see them too, but only one pinecone has a light which doesn’t fade, a light that’ll make your hands glow too. You’re the only one who can see that pinecone. Especially now, when you’re this close, don’t let the happenings in the background rattle you, don’t compromise on choosing a pinecone simply because it glows. If you take a similar, resembling, almost-identical pinecone to yours, you’ll enslave yourself to the battle against the pain, because you’ll spend your whole life believing that you chose according to your free spirit, when in fact you chose a pinecone that only glowed for a moment. You’ll develop frustration over time without knowing why, and the pain will continue appearing.”
I continued walking through the trees. The ground was soft. My eyes scanned around, checking the length and width of the area. Nothing glowed. Not on the branches either. Nothing but dry pinecones on the ground and pinecones on the trees.
I tried to focus on the trees that seemed to stick out in the space. I eyed over the countless pinecones on their branches, on the ground around them too. So many. I went back to searching for the ones that glowed before, but their glow had weakened. For a moment the grove disappeared and then returned. I shook my head and turned to the pinecone apothecary with fright. I started to walk towards him.
“Beyond the Mountains of Freedom, everything is clearer!” he indicated for me to stop. “When you crossed the chasms, you’d already confronted the fear and the anxiety, and you marched towards terror. They’ll never disappear from your life, they’ll always appear in front of you in moments of doubt, any time you’ll have a choice to make. Use the same courage that you had found in the river, and go back to the edge of your abilities which you’d discovered in the mountains. Re-confront the fear and anxiety every time, but acknowledge their strengths, remember they’re only the mirage that sparked your tears of suffering, the tears that made you notice how the Land of the Mosaic altered for you, and then were swapped with the laughter of strength.” He sprinkled more of the powder, “Dare to approach it! Reach out your hand to the right one!”
I turned back and took a deep breath in. This time I stayed in one spot even when I saw certain pinecones glowing again in the space around me. Slowly, everything became blurry. The grove disappeared and the pinecones slowly dimmed down into a single faded
background, until I saw only one pinecone. I noticed it clearly. A simple brown pinecone, like the ones I had played with as a child. The sense of time disappeared. I went over to pick it up, and the pinecone glowed very brightly, my hands glowed the more they got near it. I held it with both my hands, and the shining of my hands gave me a closeness to myself I had never before known. I noticed depths that I never knew existed in me. I saw new places within me. I became newly and intimately acquainted with my free spirit. I could feel myself living, at one with the free spirit that was occurring in the present, inseparable from it. I listened to it, and the void within me filled with the light of the pinecone that was enveloped within my hands. I clearly heard the eternal soul within me speaking to the one-time person that I am. I didn’t need to understand, experience, know or feel, it was just there, my eternity of existence. I looked into its light and listened to my free spirit quietening and calming down. Smiling and cleaning my body, caressing me from within. Passing through me and through the pinecone and connecting me to the source of the light, the pinecone’s inner point of glowing, so that I could touch the light and it could pass through me without becoming blocked. I wanted nothing but to continue holding it. Everything around me was lucid. Shining. Everything sounded clear. I had complete certainty that it was indeed my pinecone.
I walked towards the pinecone apothecary, and the grove reappeared with each step I took. He lifted my backpack and opened it for me. I put the pinecone inside it and its light shone over the edges of the folded drawing. I took the paper out and gave it to him.
He unfolded the drawing and stared at it, “You can’t go back to where you’ve never been,” he read out with a quiet and exceptionally pleasant voice. “Choopster made you the drawing that’s before the memory. This is the everlasting drawing that she shares with you, a land-crossing drawing.” His eyes sparkled and shone. He looked at the paper again. “So many people from faraway lands miss out their everlasting drawing, a drawing made for them by a child from the Land of the Mosaic so that they wouldn’t forget him.” He smiled to me and his face glowed. “They miss out the drawing until they don’t see it anymore. In faraway lands they call it déjà vu, here we call it the natives’ everlasting drawing, the land-crossing drawing.”
“And what will happen with her?”
“She’ll find her place in the Land of the Mosaic once you return to the land from which you came. Don’t worry about her.” He folded the drawing and put it in his pants’ pocket. “Let’s go back.”
We stopped in front of the lone house near a little pit filled with pieces of wood and dry twigs. Near the pit there were a few items organized on a rectangular piece of metal with holes in it. “Give me your pinecone,” he passed over to the other side of the pit, moved the items off the metal piece and lifted it, pulled out its four legs and stood it over the pit like a little table. He picked up a box of matches and lit the wood and the twigs. Smoke filled the pit until a little flame lit up. When I took the pinecone out of my backpack and gave it to him, I could see my hands glowing again with the pinecone. “Within the pinecone grove of the Land of the Mosaic, there’s a single unique pinecone for each person from all of the lands.” He placed the pinecone over the holes. “The seeds within it are carried far away, and some stay trapped within the pinecone until their time is up.” He sprinkled the transparent substance from the box over the pinecone and the burning fire.
“In the Land of the Mosaic there is no happiness, there’s freedom.” He blew on the flames. “Happiness is an invention of people who came from faraway lands, who think it’s obtainable and are certain it starts at some point or is about to end at some point,” he passed his hands over the pinecone. “You can either search for happiness or choose freedom. Those who came here from afar and continued searching for happiness within the Land of the Mosaic, got lost until they came upon others who had gotten lost too. They still tell each other that it exists. I think you’ve met them on your way to me.” He rolled the pinecone to the left and to the right and then stood it up. “I’m not offering you the Land of the Mosaic or the faraway land you were born into, only the freedom to be between them and to move through all the lands without pain. I’ll prepare a remedy for you that will heal the pain.”
The pinecone opened and widened. Sounds of wood crackling accompanied the wind that blew from afar, dispersing the little seeds that cracked the pinecone’s scales, split away from it, left it and floated through the air. “In each of these flying seeds lies the potential for a tree. Its size, color, height and life. Its entire destiny and its part in one of the lands.” He pointed at the glimmering seeds, took a piece of fabric and spread it on his palm, lifted the pinecone and blew on it. “Within the pinecone, one-time trees occur. Each of them is coincidental and impossible to duplicate,” he passed it to his other hand, “and now they’re floating towards their destination.”
Darkness descended, only the flames of the fire and the glimmer of the flying seeds were visible through the night. He turned the pinecone in his hand and then stopped and looked at it. He broke off one of the scales and put the pinecone on the ground. He pressed the scale between his fingers and extracted a golden grain. “This is the pine nut from which I’ll prepare your remedy. It and you shall be carried away to the same place. Just like people, it too has no condition for being. You too are like it, coincidental, one-time, and full of the potential of becoming what it is you’re meant to become. Nobody really knows how all the seeds become distributed around the lands, but they have no condition for being there. Just like people have no condition for being.” He picked up a little stone grinder and a short stick that was wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. He placed the grinder on the metal piece and started crushing the pine nut over the flames that poked out through the holes. The sound of his pounding and crushing accompanied his voice. “Before you take the remedy, I want you to know that once you’ve taken it you won’t be able to search for happiness ever again.” He looked at me and waited for approval. “But you’ll forever be able to receive freedom.”
“I only want to live without pain,” I mumbled and my voice cracked.
“You’ll get there soon, Julian.” He resumed his grinding. “Literally physically, you’ll get there. And the air will be cleaner, and the language clearer. And the people’s eyes will wish you a good morning, afternoon and evening. It’ll seem to you as though you’ve always known the people of the new-old land. You’ll settle down. You’ll look serenely at your past and live peacefully with the present moment. You’ll be surrounded by your loved ones. You’ll speak with your free spirit all of the time, and you’ll be your own life’s hero for developing bravery in order to challenge the life you had known, and for returning to your land of origin.” He dripped some water into the grinder. “It may be that you’ll think you were never here,” he looked into the grinder and smelled it. “But that is a natural occurrence for those who have found a remedy for the pain,” he turned the stick and mixed with its narrow tip.
“And what about Alex and Tom? My family and friends?” my lips trembled. “After I take the remedy, will I ever see them again?” Tears choked me.
“Your loved ones never left you, you’re the one who left occasionally. They never noticed it because like most people in faraway lands, they forgot that they themselves had visited here at least once in their lives. They’ve lost the ability to remember that the Land of the Mosaic exists. From now on, they’ll be at your side wherever you’ll be, because the pain won’t return anymore. This remedy will heal you. You’ll have the freedom to be, not in the land from which you came, or in the Land of the Mosaic, but the freedom to be like your pinecone’s seeds, moving painlessly between the lands until you reach your place.” He spread the fabric on his hand again and lifted the grinder. “Here,” he handed it to me. “Drink. When I tell you, close your eyes. When you open them again, the pain will no longer be.”
The fabric was hot from t
he grinder’s stone. I smelled it, blew into it, carefully touched it with my lips, and I drank. I swallowed and handed it back to him. “And what now?” I could hardly speak.
He placed the grinder and the fabric on the ground and came closer to me. “Close your eyes,” he put one hand on my face and with a gentle movement closed my eyes. “When you open them, you’ll be where your pinecone’s pine nut is,” he left his hand pressed against my eyes. “Welcome home.” He put his other hand over my eyes, covering them completely. “When I say the following words, repeat them after me and then open your eyes.”
The tears flowed through his fingers.
“There is no condition for being a person.”
“There is no condition for being a person,” I repeated after him.
“You’re allowed to be.”
“You’re allowed to be.”
“Just to be.” He removed both his hands.
“Just to be.”
I opened my eyes.
