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Sheep for life

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Once there was a tree. But it’s better to say that once there was a sheep, since there is no tree to see. So a sheep.

That sheep had many branches. No, that doesn’t sound right. That tree had many branches. But we see no tree, but a sheep. So a sheep had many uhm.. feet.

On one branch lay a sheep. Wait, we don’t see a branch, since we don’t see a tree. It’s a sheep we see, so it’s feet we see, and under those feet lay an uhm.. a duvet?

And he climbed that tree a long time ago.. no wait.. that duvet.. nah, that doesn’t sound right, he climbed his feet? He climbed his sheep?

“Pota, just say what you wanted to say, no matter what I do in the pictures, okay?”

Once there was a tree.
And that tree had many branches.
On one branch there lay a sheep.
He had climbed that tree a long time ago.
And so he lay on that branch a long time too.

He had been there long. So long even, that he couldn’t remember why he had gone up in the first place.
But now he liked the view.
The wind blew through his wool.
Birds nested around him.
Ants sometimes crawled over him.

And while this sheep lay on that branch, he had a thought.
Who decides who is a tree and who is a sheep, the thought was.
Who decides what a tree is for and who decides what a sheep is for?
He lay there so long, that he became part of the tree.

Then autumn came, and leafs fell down.
He let himself fall down too, just like a leaf.
And then spring came and the leafs were growing back.
He started to grow wool too. And he climbed back in the tree.

And then the leafs whispered the secrets of the wind.
He whispered too, but his sounded more like bleating. He bleated as soft as he could.
And when the wind would roar through the branches, he would bleat harder too.

Then seasons turned into time, and time passed.
The sheep noticed some differences between him and the tree.
The leafs dwindled through the air, carried playfully by that same secrets telling wind.
When sheep let himself fall, it wasn’t a pretty sight; he just fell straight down, ending with a thud. Poof.

He also noticed something else. The fallen leafs didn’t get back up when time turned into season and it became spring. They seemed to gently disappear, honoring their service. While sheep had to climb all the way back up the tree again.

And when he was in the tree again, he noticed that no new green leafs followed him. They just seemed to spring out of nowhere. Poof. There they were.

And he started noticing that it wasn’t the leafs making that beautiful sound. It was the wind through them. All the while he was doing his own bleating, on his own, having climbed back up again, on his own.

He did love the view though. He did love being surrounded by so much fresh green. He loved the companionsheep of ants and had gotten to know a lot of other insects that seemed to be in this tree, whether they had to climb their way into it or not.

I like being up here, sheep said, being in here, sheep said. Because this thick branch keeps me from falling down. And it’s better here than it is down there. Sound seems to travel differently when you’re up here.

Did I mishear or misspeak it all this time? All that time that I made Potamotrygorgeous say sheep for life? Was it actually tree of life? How could my ears have been so heavy..

Sheep decided to rest and he decided something else too: to not think too much about the difference between trees and sheep.

Because all are covered by the same herder.

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