It is Saturday morning in Brisbane, Australia.
I am lying on a bench in Anzac park. I am a constant visitor of this small park which straddles the Cootha hills and the town’s botanic gardens, two important natural areas in west Brisbane. My room is located just in front of the park. In fact, its proximity to the park is the main reason I decided to rent it. I am studying for my PhD in Old Europe and I’m here for a 3 month-long exchange. My initial preference was to rent a room located in a more convenient place somewhere close to the university campus at St Lucia. When I took this room soon after my arrival, my plan was to stay only for a week until I find a better one. However, when I saw in the next morning this beautiful park shimmering with life and shining with the glorious beauty of nature, I decided to stay longer so I could enjoy morning and evening walks listening to the chiming birds. I felt this would perhaps renew me and make me more in tune with myself and the universe.
The story of me and nature is that of an unrequited love.
The first ten years of my life, which are probably the happiest ones, were spent in the country side of ETHIOPIA. I grew up wandering freely in the wilderness and soaking in the bounties of nature. My parents were teachers in a newly opened rural school, and we lived in a beautiful school compound with pristine surroundings.
Our house was located in the foot of a small hill, and the hill was topped with two large eucalyptus trees. Every morning, I would join the kids living in the school compound (my two siblings, and the 3 kids of the school’s only staffer) to climb up the hill and scurry through the shrubs and bushes that litter the slopes of the hill hunting for butterflies. At the foot of the hill is a small stream that flows during the rainy season. The stream starts in the nearby swamps that grow thick, weight-high grasses. It was very exciting for us to gather and watch the stream in rainy days when the gushing floods overflow its banks and make a thunderous noise out of its usually small waterfall. In other days, the water of the stream is clear and we would go into it trying to catch tadpoles which we called ‘fish’.
Bordering the compound of our school, just a hundred meters from our house, there was a much bigger river that flows through the year. The banks of the river were dotted with dokma trees that generously grew charcoal black berries whenever it is season. The best times of my childhood in my memory are related to my adventures around the river. We would go to the river for swimming and fruit gathering every day. Climbing up the fruit trees was one way we competed among each other. As we grew up, we would go even beyond the river and the school compound into the mountains from which the river originates. These mountains contained more types of wild fruits, and it was quite a thrilling experience to climb them up.
After I started my 5th grade of school, I was suddenly plucked out of my wild, sweet life and placed in dreary small town full of treacherous and noisy kids. My parents changed school, and there was no way I could stay behind even if I wished to. Not minding the smallness of its scope, mine was no less tragic than Adam’s ‘eviction’ from Eden. It was one of the ugliest changes in my life, and I believe I still suffer from its consequences.
Back in Brisbane.
The morning is probably not the best morning. The sun was not shining, and it is long since the bountiful jacaranda flowers that once brightly decorated the park had fallen. But it has been raining abundantly over night, and every casual observer knows how beautifully plants respond to abundant water. The earth is soaked with water, and the air is damp and wafts of the mixed scent of flowers and soil. The trees in the park, having absorbed so much water, and with their branches still wet with the night-long rain, seem happy and excited. The park seems ready to explode from the excitement of life.
Lying on the bench, I watched the branches of the tree that towered over me, and the clouds beyond. As I sigh, I feel all my worries and troubles leaving me. I am calm and relaxed. I am full again. If the universe has a personality and could talk to me, I would tell it I am at peace with it. I felt in tune with everything around me.
Just then started the fantasy. The first thing that came to my mind was the appearance of Moses and Elijah to Jesus and his disciples on the mountain tops 2000 years ago. And the thought crossed my mind, it must have been a holy moment like this. Everything beautiful, and exactly in its place. Everyone calm and content. It must have felt so, for otherwise, Peter, Jesus’s disciple, would not have asked him: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” In his own wisdom, the disciple was trying to capture the glory of the moment, put it on hold, frame it, and put it in a place where he won’t lose it. As if a picture would keep alive the life it pictures.
Time indeed is cruel. Moments of completeness - when nothing is lacking and yet nothing remains to be added for – are rare and precious. Completeness would mean an end of the drama of life and existence, for what would be the meaning of effort - of thought and action and movement and planning - when everything is complete and no problem remains to be solved? Indeed such moments, if they occur at all, are as precious as gold. But when they eventually occur, the cruel time takes them away. As if they were ordinary moments. As if they were not the moments that make the whole journey of life worthy of its trouble.
Unfortunately for us, time travels in one direction. It is not something that can be gone through and returned to again, or avoided, as the need may be, or paused, for that matter. At least in this sense space is more forgiving to man. It can be gone through and returned to again. Just like I chose to rent my room here, and I could leave it if I don’t like it. What if it were the same with time? Just as you can park your car in any slot in the parking lot, what if you could park your life in any of the years you lived, or even in any time all men lived? I would certainly park my life in a great moment like this one, and savor the joy of oneness with the universe for eternity.
I was awakened from my fantasy by the increasing noise of the birds’ singing. I don’t know why Australian birds like to take every excuse to sing. If it is a little dark and cloudy, they pretend as if it were dawn and start the whole circus again. And when they sing, they do it as loudly as they could. Before I got used to it, their song used to wake me up every morning.….
Now, as I listened to it, I started to realize that their song makes a certain distinct voice. If you try to spell it, it goes something like: “Errropeeeeaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan…..” and it goes on and on from branch to branch, and from tree to tree. I wondered if the birds were calling out for help. May be they are scared of me. May be they are watching from the top of the tree, and they are suspecting I am some lurking enemy. But again, how would they know I carry a European passport? Even many of my friends don’t know I have changed a passport to make my travel to Down Under easy.
The more I closely listened to their voice, it sounded something quite different. Not exactly as before, but it now it seems to sound more clearly as : “Ittooopiaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Ittooopiaaan…..”
Well, there you have the answer. These birds recognize that a foreigner is lurking in their midst. They have identified me as Itopian, it seems, and I am not quite sure if I can dispute that. And I started to listen even more cautiously, this time discerning a quite distinct and different combination of rhythm: “Ittooopiaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan….. Ittooopiaaan….. Errropeeeeaaan…..”
As it appears, the birds are in confusion about my identity. And the debate went on and on until I slowly woke up from my ecstasy to the inevitably mundane life. Where was I planning to go this afternoon?
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