Project „Book of G.“ – Page 19
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Don’t ask me why I am thanking walnuts… you need to read till the end of the text and then, only then you can understand why it is worth expressing my gratitude for walnuts, and especially walnut trees.
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This is my first text in my adventure about writing about gratitude even if it says page 19. It is because I don’t want to prioritize. So I started with a random number. I know that I need to keep a record soon and do need to prioritize the things I want to thank because since I had this crazy idea, my mind is working at high speed, producing so many thoughts about where I should pay attention to and include a story about it in my collection. Let me get started, otherwise alone this intoduction will turn to a text of its own…
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I was born and grew up in a big city. I could have been one of those children who believed that the milk comes from the bottle, but no, I knew a lot about nature. Especially trees… My lovely childhood memories include climbing wild chestnut trees in the garden where my mother worked as well as the gardens of the University of Istanbul in Beyazit when no one was around. I still wonder how it came and I never broke a bone.
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Living in a city has the disadvantage of not owning land. Then, you also don’t have the responsibility of caring for plants and maintaining the ground. So all I knew about agriculture and farming during my childhood were the pictures in the books and some blurred memories as I drove past some fields. Milk was brought home by the milkman and walnuts were bought at the market! But life changes dramatically, and it did in my case…
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Much later I happened to own a walnut tree partly, and had to share it with the ravens in the neighbourhood. During summertime it was great to have my children sleep under the shadow of this young tree, but it was autumn when the ravens claimed their right, leaving me only some handfuls of the walnuts. (Even if the beauty of ravens fascinates me, I will always have this unfinished business with their race. I must laugh at my words… There is a learning here as well! Maybe I should include ravens in my list, too.) Having a deciduous tree means hard work in autumn. I cursed everytime I had to collect the leaves shed and plan this irregular task on my busy days.
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Life treats you the same way till you learn your lesson! Probably because of my unpleasant feelings about my responsibility for my partly owned walnut tree, I was gifted with a massive self-owned walnut tree some years later. You will laugh, but caring for my tree throughout the year has gradually become a normality for me and the tedious task of collecting the fallen leaves in autumn, a daily task I have looked forward to, so that my garten was again neat and tidy.
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Year over year, autumn by autumn fell thousands and thousands of leaves. Every leaf reminding me a tiny bit about the inevitable course of life. I have learned to abandon my furious mood and surrendered to my task… There was nothing else to do!
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A walnut tree is just an ordinary tree, but for me, symbolically my connection to nature. I mean not the learning about how trees grow, the kinds and all that stuff, but understanding and accepting nature’s laws by living them again and again. Sometimes it takes so long for the simplest things to comprehend… therefore I am grateful for having my walnut tree.
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Oh, the story is not yet finished! About two years ago I was again collecting fallen leaves, my mind jumping from thought to thought… repeating my previous elaborations about designing a function that would derive the statistical distribution of falling leaves… (Do I still have your attention, or you need to fetch a glass of water?) Maybe you could read the last part once again… and I promise, there will be no more highly sophisticated phrases about science and technology, just plain English!
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Yeah! I am an engineer… I cannot but think in patterns and use mathematics wherever possible in my everyday life. And I am a woman – a multitasking genius! Therefore it was a brilliant combination to combine body work with mind work. I don’t think I am not much different than other people, maybe with this one difference in the combination of the weirdest tasks I conducted and the most unsuitable topics I thought about.
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Then I decided to write my thoughts down because they kept haunting me. If you know how it feels elaborating the same question again and again – or the same dream every night – then I don’t need to explain more I guess. Retrospectively I can understand the urge to produce an essay, but at that time I just wanted to get that buzz off my head.
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During the course of this writing process something incredible happened… not a miracle though – no need to exaggerate! I just happened to enjoy what I was doing! This playing with the words, combining uncombinable topics with each other (like walnuts and statistics) finally webbing a red thread through the paragraphs that cresends to an unexpected ending…
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I am not easy to amaze, but I was thrilled at my power. Discovering writing for me was the absolutely necessary outlet for all the wir-war in my mind because I tend to think excessively, so that it hurts. Texting is then a kind of brain dump in the first place. Organizing all these written thoughts in a meaningful manner is like conducting an orchestra. Maybe I should better bring the analogy of feeling like a queen of my own empire… I hope you can follow me and read my enthusiasm between the lines. After reading (for exploring), became writing (for expressing) my life purpose! No need to say that this simple triviality was a kind of turnover in my life…
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With this new occupation, (I don’t think I can call it vocation yet.) I could produce for the first time on my own what I wanted… and no more consume what others have created. Doesn’t that feel wonderful? I hope there are others around who feel the same way I do. I had a strong feeling that it was just the right thing to do as if I was waiting all my life for this moment. There seems to be so many ideas in my mind, they pop up from time to time and I note them very bravely but unfortunately cannot find enough time to text all of them yet.
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Now that I am a bit more advanced in writing, and no more enthusiastic about the magic of it, I am glad to go back to my memories and write about walnuts in order to value and admire their role in my development. I am grateful for the walnut trees that have led me to this path in my current lifespan. This cherishing will be somehow childish, for sure, but I cannot leave without saying: I thank you walnuts!
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PS: If you are asking yourself, what I had written then about the walnuts, you can find this text here: Bald ist es wieder der Kein-Blatt-Tag. It is in German and means: soon it is again the no-leaves-day.