Empty Sky

December 13, 2025

The very large pepper tree in the yard behind us died, and with great regret, the neighbors had it removed. It affects four homes, the tree being at the intersection of a quartet of backyard fences. 

It provided shade in our backyard, protecting us from the overbright sun. Although it’s December, it’s Santa Barbara, and yesterday afternoon the heat rose in palpable waves, light bouncing off the ground and glaring hotly into the house. 

Is it possible to have too much light? Maybe not in metaphysical terms, but for a southern exposure that already gets too hot, I would say yes. 

*****

The empty space where the tree was echoes with its presence. I still expect to see it when I look out the windows. My mind busily began thinking of fixes for all that emptiness and glare. A pergola? A sailcloth shade? Some fast-growing bush or tree? The neighbors will plant a cork oak to replace the pepper tree, but it will be years before it achieves significant height.

A parallel mental track, one not as enmeshed in problems that need fixing, calmly noted the spacious vista, marred by power-lines previously buried in the pepper tree’s green disguise. A forlorn ten-inch chunk of branch remains suspended against the sky, having grown around a communications cable, poignant as a dropped shoe behind a fleeing child.

Emptiness is not wicked in and of itself. Isn’t a spacious mind, a mind empty enough to allow peaceful silence to shimmer through the soul, eagerly sought by meditators? 

Before I physically fill that empty swath of sky, it beckons me to sit with it and observe what arises. Grief for the perished tree. Curiosity about the future presence of the cork oak. Speculation on whether Cox or Frontier will bother to wrest their cable from the suspended chunk of branch.

*****

It’s now two days after the great removal. I’ve had 24 more hours to acclimate to the tree loss. For some reason, I’m thinking about how the Truther/Ascension community anticipates fifth-dimensional wow-ness slotting into place when the nastiest dregs of 3D are routed and sent fleeing. Instant beauty, peace, abundance, as distinct as the upgrade from black-and-white to color in The Wizard of Oz.

Since 5D, where we’re headed (they say), is the land of instant Shazam, that expectation is natural. The logical fringes of mathematicians or quantum physicists, as well as metaphysicians, might explain the instantaneous transformation: We just hop from one reality to another! Everything is happening at the same time. What you experience depends upon where you focus.

It does sound lovely. I’m sure my sad back-fence neighbors would sign up for a presto-chango fully mature cork oak towering in place right now, not in 10 or 15 years. So would I.

But I wonder, what might I miss, what might we all miss, without the emptiness in between?

*****

I have no idea how this experience would unfold if we suddenly hopped into 5D via the Solar Flare/Event. 3IAtlas will reach its closest proximity to Earth shortly; Winter Solstice is almost here; the days of 2025 grow thinner like a well-rubbed ancient coin, and wasn’t all the magic supposed to occur this year? Maybe we’ll still witness that fully mature cork oak by Christmas.

I know better than to rely on predicted timelines. Anything other than breakfast-lunch-dinner is iffy, and even meals careen wildly off schedule in our slightly bumpy third-dimensional household. 

So I’ll content myself, sitting with the empty sky, that lonely chunk of branch suspended by the cable, and my imagination. I reckon it wouldn’t hurt to unearth a sketchbook with slightly yellowed paper, sharpen a few pencils, and invite imagination to play with reality. I can draw that tree before it’s even planted, and in the drawing, perhaps, help pull it from the ethers of possibility into the solidity of that which is, here and now.