Change
A condemned park sprawls in disrepair on the steep incline west of St. Mark’s Cathedral. It has become overgrown with brambles and nothing human has an easy time with the eroded paths and clutter of vines. Sometimes the homeless will set up shelter there: it is quiet and secure because it is so hard to traverse.
In the deepest part of the park, if you can reach it among the blackberry suckers, there is a tree, a scraggly conifer overwhelmed by its taller relatives. Its cones are small and hard and appear every autumn covered in soft fuzz. Once the fuzz withers, the cones are easily plucked. They feel strangely like marbles and will always smell faintly of cinnamon.
If you desperately need change in your life, enter the park when the moon is waxing, and pick a single ripe cone. Sew it inside a silk pouch and wear it around your neck, against your skin, until a new moon is born. Your life will soon take on a dramatic change. Usually it is for the better.
You should risk this only if you can accept the consequences, and genuinely need the change. You can never bring back the way things were.
In the deepest part of the park, if you can reach it among the blackberry suckers, there is a tree, a scraggly conifer overwhelmed by its taller relatives. Its cones are small and hard and appear every autumn covered in soft fuzz. Once the fuzz withers, the cones are easily plucked. They feel strangely like marbles and will always smell faintly of cinnamon.
If you desperately need change in your life, enter the park when the moon is waxing, and pick a single ripe cone. Sew it inside a silk pouch and wear it around your neck, against your skin, until a new moon is born. Your life will soon take on a dramatic change. Usually it is for the better.
You should risk this only if you can accept the consequences, and genuinely need the change. You can never bring back the way things were.