Talking to myself (On Beginnings)

"Where do we begin?"

"Never thought about it. Perhaps, at the beginning?"

"Where is that?"

"The point from where we start."

"What is the start, or a start? Can you describe it? What does it look like, feel like?"

"Dew on leaves..."

"That is the beginning of the end. It will dry. It has no start."

"The leaves, flowers do."

"So, you are saying that one's end is another's beginning."

"No. I am talking of only beginnings."

"You gave dew on leaves as an example."

"But I did not specify whose beginning it is."

"No one talks about fresh due on autumn leaves, so what does it mean?"

"The dew chooses what will anyway have a good start."

"You are implying, in fact casting aspersions, on the dew. Don't you think the dew gets nothing in return?"

"The dew is meant to stop for a while. It was born to be that. Some things are like that. It is their fate. One sharp glare from the sun and the drops disappear."

"Have you seen a dewdrop in the afternoon?"

"Yes, and at night too. Touched it."

"Does it not wish to stay?"

"It may, but a sway of the leaf or the closing of a flower would end and destroy it. It is overstaying."

"Don't leaves want it to stay?"

"Leaves are sustained through other means."

"If leaves have options, then their beginning is not independent."

"It is. To keep them going, others join in. It's nature's equilibrium."

"When does nature know when to start?"

"It probably knows when to stop."

"So nature puts an end?"

"It is a cycle. Nothing ends."

"The dew?"

"Coming for a while is not the end. Have you breathed the early morning air? Don't you feel a moistness in it? That is where the dew disappears. For me, just the image of it each day on every leaf is a beginning. It does not matter whose it is..."

"If you were a leaf, what would you say about it?"

"The dew drops are my tears of joy."

© Farzana Versey, 1-1-2013

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For those who came in late, these are internal monologues. It shows I argue not only with others but myself too!

The photograph has nothing to do with leaves. It is my homage to a new day, of trying to see through a gesture.

Wishing all of you a great beginning...and renewal of the precious old...