Joining the Dots

Day 22 - 1:30pm, 22 January 2019

There's no GPS in the suicide forest, nor compasses; iron deposits in the volcanic soil are thought to knock them out. Aokigahara (青木ヶ原), also known as the Sea of Trees (樹海), sits at the bottom of Mount Fiji. The trees have grown out of hardened lava, the calling card of an eruption that happened some 300 years ago. Their roots cannot penetrate the earth to a great depth so they compensate by forming an above-the-ground network. There is little in the way of wildlife and the trees are so dense in parts that the sun cannot stretch down to the forest floor and the wind ruffles its hair (hence the sea of trees) but cannot weave a dance through it. There is also the danger of coming upon a corpse or the This is no place to go forest bathing.

But today I go virtual forest bathing, listening to a radio programme about the suicide forest, in which a small group of poets go into the forest to write poetry. One of the poets explains that there is an invisible layer of words over everything, a presence that others are unaware of - the poet's job is to see the connections and raise others' awareness of the words by joining the dots.

And that is what I am aiming for here - in my life, work, family, writing and even in the daily walk down here - to find the points of connection. Sometimes all I see are dots, sprinkled everywhere, senseless, meaningless, random and tiring; but once I can see the connection, it is there, self-supporting. A weight lifted. I create the bridge, but then I walk over it and move on.