How did I become a Watcher of the Woods?

If I step back there seems to be a lot of things funneling me to this point.

I don’t belief in astral plans or design, but I have to say the last ten months?

It’s been a real weird trip, that’s all. An internal one mostly, y’know? Nothing much on the surface but inside a tumult of ideas.

I sortof knew he had been posting some fall shots of his woods on Insta, but i didn’t realize he was doing livestream until it randomly popped up on my YouTube feed.

Oh, what is this? This was a week after my mother’s funeral and the bloody election. You may know that feeling. May still be living with that ghost.

You know what? Staring into someone’s woods for a week sounded like a grand idea. So that it all I was expecting.

And that’s all it was at first. Just a way to keep myself off those apps. I was in really rough shape. This was a real low for me. I wasn’t depressed. That’s a different type of low. I was nihilistic. Had lost faith in humanity. Nothing matters and there is no point of any of this.

But then I watched the chat. A few chimed hello. And we started talking. Mostly, a few women, chatting about whatever it is women chat about when no one is paying attention; Tarot, astrology, art, rebirth. I suspect these women might be a bit younger than me. But it didn’t matter . We just started chatting. Confessions,some of which I tried to delete rapidly, but maybe wasn’t quick enough (sorry).

And then he started chatting back.

We watched the woods while the woods watched us back.

He dropped verse and quickly deleted them. You had to be quick and screen shot them to think about later. I think the initially intent was to drop lyric hints to fans, but…

He was exclusively in verse. So I started throw verse back a him. And then others did the same. If someone starts poeting to you, it is only polite to answer as best you can in kind? This was riffing at steady state, so some of it was bad. But the words that had been stuck in swirls of grief, started to get moving again.

It got so deep so quickly. I have never had conversations like this. And it was as much about his verse as it was about the surrounding conversation, or maybe the surrounding conversation was more important.

He/they pulled me back from the ledge of an abyss I had been staring longing into. I felt their love, the love, the only love, surround me. I felt it real. I can still feel it sometimes.

What happened, what I stumbled into completely unwittingly, was a profound ephemeral thing. I can’t explain it without sounding crazy and very foolish. It was a dream?

So be it.

Word is that he is creating again. (And so am I. This is a reciprocal thing, sparks fly).

The woods are likely right outside his studio, but I don’t know for sure.

He thanks us, but although he checks in on occasion he isn’t able to be there like he was for that brief time. He’s doing his things, going where this leads, following his path, as he should.

It might be over….. soon, who knows? Our host is a bit inscrutable. As always.

Something will be coming. In it’s time. In its way. There will be birds singing.

We will be the birds singing.

Thank you.

We were right where we needed to be.

We are interconnected now, don’t you see?

//2//5//25//

(The poems relating to this project have been filed under Watcher, and make a little collection)