Komorebi

Ko • Tree
Moreru • To escape
Bi • Sun (or day)

That's, roughly speaking, what I gather from the explanations found here and there across the web. The Japanese word is common, carrying in itself hardly any poetry. It refers to a state, a rare commodity of perception that silently affirms the beauty of the world.

It has been proven that walking through a sun-drenched forest soothes, reduces levels of cortisol and adrenaline. The architectural interplay of photons and shadows, paired with the slow rustling of leaves, translates into a lengthening of breath, into the development of certain brainwaves. Merely imagining a walk in a place removed from the noise of everyday life would generate its own share of benefits.

Fond of contrarian delicacies, I immediately attach nuances to this promised stillness. It's true that simply observing the light passing through the skin of these leaves compels a certain restraint. During these moments of calm observation, our mind eagerly adopts a thoroughly epicurean simplicity. Thoughts stretch out, the ocean of anxieties flattens into nothing more than a horizontal floor of serenity.

It's true, too, that one must cherish these moments, tame the kaleidoscopic play of reflections, provoke them by widening one's pupils further, become a plant brimming with idle chlorophyll thirsting for light. Living then becomes simple and bearable. In drinking the water of the sun, do we not better develop our blind, nervous roots?

For the canopies nourish a world that plunges deep into a nocturnal soil where parasitic yet beneficial fungi intertwine, where earthworms travel languidly, forming fragile tunnels that roots will soon borrow to further pursue their quest.

Whatever illuminates also creates shadows — that much is a truism — there where whatever cannot long tolerate the day takes refuge. The sun, on its own, burns. Our fears, those brittle inventions, dread it. Our desires, those savory and unfaithful lovers, prefer to mount us in the half-light, secretly, from behind, before the reasonable armies of our conscience come to fight them off.

The true beauty of life, it seems to me, lies in this play of contrasts, in this vast spectrum fading beyond our daily vision. Truth is ultraviolet or infrared, colored like an oil slick on water that ignites at the slightest friction. I couldn't prove it, though. What drives me to write this still escapes me.

Komorebi. Sunlight escaping the stubborn opacity of things. This contemplation, even as it soothes, still leaves us in the dark of ignorance.

Of course, it's all just a matter of perception.