"One way or another, one way or another..."

Sounds of chimes lightly suggesting their tones onto the soft wind, cool grass in the diffused morning sun, sweet smells of spring flowers offering their buds to their Earth: these were not the things the Heart experienced as he sat and contemplated early in one morning. He was in a small hot room with a handful of middle-aged people running a video conference call. The call went through, the conference was under way, and with one eye on the monitor, the Heart sat in meditation.

Almost as a cruel joke, the Venetian blinds were pulled all but closed over the broad window in the room. The Heart looked at the tangle of branches and leaves blowing in-between the slats of the blinds, and let his brain fill in the data absent from his perception. He could practically see the whole picture of the branches heaving to and fro and its leaves flowing in tune with each other. Then he attempted to stop completing the pattern and see the window for what it was-- tan slats of plastic on top of thin strips of luscious green motion. Who's to say whether or not the leaves hidden by the blinds truly existed? The Heart couldn't prove it; out of sight, out of mind. Maybe we're more adept visualizers before we learn the concept of object permanence. Perhaps the leaves were only real when they were visible through the slats.

The Heart then decided that it’s totally unimportant if someone sings the wrong lyrics to popular songs, as long as they're singing from the heart. "Jo-jo was a man who thought we was a woman, but he was another man!" Who cares what other people think? Fuck 'em all. Fuck 'em.

The conference eventually came to a close and the Heart dutifully put away his equipment and wrapped his cables, all the while assuring the Board of Regents that it was actually very interesting for him to listen to them blather on about god-knows-what for two hours. The people filed out of the room, continuing their discussion, and left the Heart alone for a few minutes. He slowly walked toward the window and pulled the blinds wide open. The leaves were there, all of them. If somehow they had disappeared when the Heart stopped perceiving them, they were certainly back now, and greener than ever. Beautiful.

The Heart carried his equipment out to the van and prayed so hard that the beautiful tree and all of its leaves would still exist even after he had left the building entirely. He couldn’t take the thought that the true simple beauty he had experienced would just cease to be. That had to be the ultimate tragedy. Later, the Heart listened to U2 and sang along as loud as he could, “It's all right, it's all right, it's all right / Shamu, the mysterious whale!”