YK’s 365 Release: Day 51

I love red-leaf trees. They are like dreams of a fire burning in the middle of the forest.

I particularly love when leaves are brilliantly red. Right before the deciduous trees of the fall. When I see a lone red-leafed tree amongst green, yellow and orange trees, I want to stand next to it, and look up into its branches because it is magical. Smiling. Maybe I was a red-leafed tree in a previous life.

One year at my grade school, which was surrounded by maple trees, we learned how to tap maple trees for syrup. Maple tree leaves change into a shockingly deep burgundy color. It’s breathtaking.

I also love Magnolia trees because they grow as if they were made for climbing. I hope to one day take the people close to me to Durham, to Duke’s campus and climb with you up my favorite Magnolia tree, where I used to hang out on the limbs with friends, a bottle of wine, the giddiness of listening to people talk as they walked past, under the clear blanket of the stars.

A tree grows in Brooklyn, that I also adore, and I have sat in its limbs, feeling wistful of not the past, but of the present. A comforting wistfulness that makes a moment tender and poignant.

All over San Francisco there are Bottle Brush trees with red flowers that tickle your face as you walk by. The first time I saw one I laughed because I was overjoyed.

Trees are beautiful. If trees are cultivated and preened right, there are responsible ways of obtaining the wood for building and creating. Wood is what I work with because as long as I can remember I have wanted to work with wood. The way it is firm yet malleable, shapeable. The way it smells and has a wide range of colors and textures. And here I am, living the manifestation of everything I could have ever imagined. I am doing what I have always wanted to do.

I have a routing kit that shapes the edges of wood so that they are beveled. I purchased it from a friend because at the time, I didn’t know how I would be working with wood, but knew I wanted to. I have also held onto it for 10 years, just in case. And now that I am actually working with wood, I see it isn’t something I use for my specific woodworking. Much like the release of Day 49, this was an acquisition as a result of this country’s way of embedding us with capitalistic tendencies and habits.

So on Day 51 of my 365 Release I am letting go of something that signifies a dream come true. May we all pursue what we have always dreamed because dreams really do come true.