I'm on my hands and knees, looking at the strange accretion of living growths that have begun to sprout from the ground in the shade around the base of a strange black boulder the size of my pickup truck. The boulder is the largest of several in a small clearing in what I think of as the jungle. The growths, almost like ferns but somehow plump and wet like fungus, are pinky-orange and sit entirely within the drip-line surrounding the tiny overhang of the boulder just before it meets the ground.

It has been hours of walking through the jungle, but it has not been difficult going. The plants, or at least, what were analogous to plants, were rarely stiff or thorny. Plunging through dense thicket was like walking through a thousand stilled car wash brushes, the strange leaves and branches soft, rubbery. The larger trees, towering above to hold up the top layer of canopy, left ample gaps for sun to peek through.

Things a little bit like geckos, gigantic

I live in a house which is painted light green
my mother and father live here as well
my father walks from room to room
and complains that our light green house is a mess
my mother looks around and agrees with my father
hands on her hips
she says one of these days
and of all the rooms in our light green home
mine is the worst
still a disaster even after I clean it
but I’m happiest there amid all the clutter
and when it comes time
I don’t want to

I am a lifelong skeptic, nay, cynic, when it comes to Eastern medicine and healing practices.  I plead my upbringing; I was birthed and raised by a pair of rigidly positivist western science practitioners.  Neither was a 'traditional' science doer; my father was a science journalist, and my mother was a psychiatrist (and yes, before you ask, that's the one with the M.D.).  I spent the vast majority of my life to date comfortable with the set of options that Western, U.S.-culture-centric offered me.