Notes on Re-entry

Bedrooms are strange. I look at the thatch roof with gratitude and a touch of contempt. Before I get to that I would like to tell you something that happened on the last evening. I was on a crest, the land fell away and 3 rhino we feeding in a clearing. It was beautifully serene and I felt so still. I was ready to leave the tree. Far away from me a lion roared and I had to go and look.

Quickly the clearing gave way to a sandveld bush. I let myself stop thinking about where that lion may be and let my body go where it wanted. Purposeful action towards and unknown purpose. The lion was my purpose. Purposeful navigation towards and unknown destination. I don’t know where I’m going but I know exactly how to get there.

It takes so doing to walk in a straight Line through a thicket but it takes some doing. One quickly gets subtly off course. Eventually the bush gave way ti riverine vegetation. A little bit before sunset I suddenly broke out of the thicket. IN front of me was a thickly reeded marsh that gave way to golden grassland. My body stopped and my mind felt incredibly quiet. Something inside of me said this is the place. For a time there was nothing but stillness. I thought I had gone mad but then across the reed bed a dark maned lion rose across the golden grass.

I was taken by joy, the presence. For six weeks in the tree everything I was searching for was there in a moment. The mystic, the tracker, the lion and me.

I tell you this because everything is astoundingly different. It’s really hard to describe how to walk back into your life with more awareness.

Lockdown is a state of mind.

The truth is we can’t really plan. We don’t know where this thing lands or ends. There is so much uncertainty as to how to proceed. The art of re-entry from what a tree teaches us is to go slowly.

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