The change

 El cambio…when is that we realize things have changed? The change is constant, yet we only noticed suddenly because perhaps the many times before expected did not happen. Or perhaps because the usual reaction we thought we would have does not appear in our mind, heart, body. 

Today I saw how they cut a tree, they took each branch and swallow it inside a machinery that reduced it to chips. There was a lot of noise. But nobody was there to witness it but me. I mean there were people walking but nobody really was paying attention. It wasn’t even a large tree, it had somehow died over the winter perhaps, and it was just the bare branches that never sprung back to the call of spring. 

When we arrived to this city, and we used to have to walk the dogs that back then were also still alive, walking underneath it was a painful thing, because it would drop an amazing amount of fruits. I believe it was some kind of a cherry tree that nobody seems to eat here, and they make a blanket of red small fruits that people, and dogs, step on and splatter them, carrying some of the purple/reddish juice on the soles of their shoes or in between their paws. Later I could see the stains on the entrance rug or even in the carpet on the stairs or in my bedroom.

Not this year, this year after my last dog died and there were no more prescribed daily walks, as I walked to my yoga classes, I kept thinking how empty the side walk look without its flowers, its leaves, its fruits. And now it will even be more empty without the tree itself.

It was never the same but there was continuity, and suddenly there will be nothing instead. 

And just like that things continue to change, and we don’t notice them until they have completely disappear, or perhaps we do notice, but we accept that everything is in constant change as long as the changes are subtle, and most things maintain certain continuity, that allow us to feel  the changes are not as evident.  

Changes are hard, but they are constant. Cambios…

Cambia, lo que tenga que cambiar…