by Meeral Umar
A lone, barren tree is to me, the epitome of fall. I do not recall the fiery waves of crinkled orange, the crimson-laced flannel, or the steaming hot drinks when I hear the term fall. Instead the only image that comes to my mind, slowly, like a wilting rose, is a single tree in the midst of nowhere—it is not adorned in burning red stars, but it is bitter and cold, burdened by the tranquility of solitude. Fall, to me, is a persisting ache, a hereditary void of the soul; the tree somehow encapsulates that all.
I have been thinking of the ouroboros, which, to define directly from the dictionary, is a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail, used to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. I wonder mostly about who came up with it; who looked around to see nature, like a black swan, dismantling herself only to pick up the broken pieces, bit by bit, and reassemble herself back into the unfazed costume she wears. Yet a few months later, she is strapped in crippling color again, burgundy, violet and bright yellow overflowing from her tresses, from her skirts.
It is not the rebirth, but the undoing that interests me. We are all constantly reconstructing ourselves, constantly evolving. But lingering in the realm of destruction, are we actually under the impression that we will be able to pull ourselves back together, that we will bloom into a better version of ourselves? Or, is it just the murder of our faults that attracts us? Like Richard Siken said: How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?
There is an inexplicable hope that dapples all of humanity in a tarnished glow—an absurd, deluding hope, arguably. Human beings have a tendency of feeling entrapped, of thinking that there may be an exit out of their anguish, an escape. In fact, they are so desperate for a way out that they do not care if the only escape from life is death. When our situation is bad, and progressively getting worse, we content ourselves with the thought that there may as well be an escape, something better awaiting outside, even if it is far out of our reach. Aristotle called him a ‘social animal’, but to me, man is merely a coil of unraveling hope; he could live without contact, but not hope.
But what if we are trying to escape ourselves? Where do we seek hope but in the martyrdom of our own tainted legacies? The coil of hope, the spiral form of a serpent curled up, becomes self-loathing. We wish to forsake our skin, shed it, desert it in its ghostly pallor. The cycle continues; the seasons unfurl, one after the other.
How many times can you kill yourself before you realize that the problem lies in the blood and not the skin—that the ouroboros eats itself, yes, but it is the end of its tail that marks the beginning of its mouth—that change has to come from within—that even nature shifts color like a mosaic chameleon because she is self-serving, and self-aware. Most of all, because she knows when to destroy herself and when to reincarnate.
I would argue that the undoing is the true spark of renewal, the one labor of love, the one act of creation that predates its physical manifestation. Let me confess that the ouroboros, personally, does not illustrate the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth, but the fact that destruction is rebirth. It does not matter what we think in that nebulous limbo of undoing, whether we hope to reconstruct ourselves or just relish the fire from our own funeral pyre. The decision to self-destruct is the factor that elucidates the smoke emerging from self-rejection; it is the first leaf that falls from the shadowed tree preparing for winter. Once the leaf descends, there is no going back—the cycle must move forward. The ouroboros eats itself…the act is enough.
Some months later, nature will rejuvenate. She will glimmer and bewitch, be crowned in labels of lovely as she flowers and teems with hue. What I really mean to say is that one has the power to be their own end and renewal, a cursed blessing one must endure by realizing that finding flaws in the self is perhaps the greatest sign of self-awareness—the knowledge that yields to change if digested.
Can you become worse in your heated attempt to turn your distortions into ash? It is hard to say. Every person is morally subject to the morals practiced in their society—in this case, the perception he holds of betterment and deterioration. Indeed, a rare few cases exemplify that the tree that loses its leaves in fall is sometimes unable to grow them back. But consider the barren tree: alone and chilly, unburdened by a hundred itching greens. Is it not a novel creation? Did the tree not mold into a fresh, luscious, completely new creature the moment it lost its leaves? Was the first instance of destruction not the change itself?
So, take a match. Light your feathers on fire. Grow them a new shade of red. And, who knows? One day, perhaps, we’ll call autumn the new spring.