Winter arrived. Southern Florida was caught by surprise by a cold front which extended from the northeast to southeast. At night the temperature dropped to below 30 F while it could not reach 59F during the day. The sun shyly made its presence known behind thick white clouds, trying to bring its life-sustaining sunlight to all living things.
My yard has six tropical almond trees. Two are next to the little pond on the north side, and the other four stand in a row on the east side. Their leaves merrily opened themselves broadly to the sunlight but they couldn't retain their chlorophyll-rich color. They were quiveringly dazed by the drop of the temperature, and underwent a reluctant transformation of colors. In a week, they put on the colors of yellow, brown, purple, and red. A little rain would suffice to show that the leaves were crying. Recently, despite my hair getting all wet from the rain, I hurriedly took many shots of Nature's precious moments wherein the tropical almonds trees shed their leaves.
Heaven and Earth shook. Winds were gathering in force, shaking and bending all flora. The bougainvillea vine which had been laden with flowers bent at the house's gate. The red flowers were still crimson red when leaving their branches.
The invisible but strongly manifested winds blended themselves with rapidly flowing clouds; they weaved through the tall swaying creaking bamboo trees; they glided past the challenging, imposing fir and cypress trees; they stooped down to the lowly fields of bent grass; and they penetrated into the trembling and falling multi-hued foliage of tropical almond trees.
All living things quietly manifested themselves. Leaves were falling off the trees because the trees no longer wanted to hang onto them and thus rejected them with indifference, sending them back to their point of origin, to the good earth.
Spring came back. The buds on the tropical almond trees received the life force from the earth, and from the light emitting from the sun, moon, and stars. The leaves were developed, then the flowers, and eventually the fruits were formed to enhance Nature's beauty and to provide food to birds and squirrels. Children would enjoy the admixture of the taste of tartness, sweetness, and sourness of the fruits as well as the buttery taste of the seeds which is similar to that the almond nuts, hence the name Tropical Almond Tree (scientific name: Terminalia catappa L.)
Everyday I would walk around in the yard and often stop at a tropical almond tree, press the two cool leaves to my cheeks, and feel the transmission of the Grace of Nature while reminiscing the warm hands of my mother on my cheeks when I was a young girl.
Fall was turning into winter, bringing colors to the foliage and beauty to the landscape as life's cycle inexorably would march on.
When it was time for leaves to fall on the ground, I became a sweeper of leaves.
With a large broom in my hands, I was not praying for stronger and stronger winds like the two sisters did while gathering the fallen leaves of the tropical almond trees in the story A Pair of Friends by Nhất Linh, nor was I lamenting "....When Heaven and Earth raised a storm of winds and dust..." like what was happening in the Chinh Phụ Ngâm (Soldier's Wife's Lamentation) by Đặng Trần Côn, but I was thinking of several persons, one of those was my man. When he was sweeping the leaves, he often talked about the sermon Reverend Martin Luther King delivered in a church in Chicago, Illinois in 1967, one year before his being assassinated for his fight for human rights for the blacks in the United States:
"Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a street sweeper who swept his job well."
But I dared not be a person of stature. I am just an ordinary person. But could anybody sweep the woods clean of fallen leaves?
The woods without fallen leaves was like a painting of endless green without a shade of yellow and red, like a piece of music without the notes of mi bémol, like a drama in verse without a subtle smile.
I put all the fallen leaves into sixteen plastic bags, each one weighing 32 pounds. The ground now showed some pebbles among fallen fruits of various colors and shapes: green, brown, fresh, withered, and shattered. The fruits would be left for a squirrel which was clinging on the trunk of the fir tree nearby, its tail raising high, its eyes concentrating on the coveted fruits on the ground.
The garden was now too clean and neat and somehow not pleasing to the eyes. It lacked vitality. I wished for the arrival of the winds once more, but my wish was met with a still silence. So I took hold of a tree trunk and shook it.
Leaves slowly floated down.
The picture of Modi got more colors. A piece of music by Beethoven got more bass notes. And a drama by Shakespeare was fortified by a subtle smile.
To be or not to be
Let it be
Be yourself. Don't be anybody else.
Florida
Fall of 2011
Amended Translation by Wissai on November 21, 2015.
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