text: A leaf falls from a tree.
  A boy walks by, coming home from school, shoulders down, exhausted.
  He doesn't see the leaf.
  To him, a leaf is… just a leaf—and leaves fall all the time.
  He lives his life like this—walking past the tree, day after day, somewhat aware of its existence but unconscious in his relation to it.
  But that tree is magical.
  He doesn't know it yet, but that tree is not supposed to whither.
  Its leaves are not supposed to fall.
  I was in my early teens when my mother took me out of school for a few months.
  Every morning I would get tics that escalated into epileptic seizures. I would scream uncontrollably, as loud as my body allowed me, and I would push my hands into my head, cramping until I fell down on the floor.
  I had episodes where I couldn't remember my name or how to do basic functions, like walking or urinating; all I could remember
  was the fact that my mother was
  indeed my mother.
  My mind had disassociated itself from the world because I couldn't see my tree. I couldn't see that my leaves were falling.
  But I had music.
  I've always been drumming; playing on the kit and various hand drums, on furniture, on my body.
  I didn't know it then, but now I see that this was my way of voicing how I felt.
  My frustrations.
  My sadness.
  Anger.
  My artistic outlet could have been dance, or weaving, or sculpting with clay.
  It could have been a martial art, table tennis, or the art of public speaking.
  But my body chose drumming.
  The psychological breakdowns I experienced continued in some form or another up until my early twenties, but giving myself to the arts—to music, to writing—as a guest and as an artist—has saved my life.
  Because three years ago, when I broke down again, with depression, with suicidal tendencies, my body chose writing, and so I started writing a novel,
  and never in my life
  have I felt
  more at home.
  More at peace.
  Drumming and listening to music allowed me to hear the leaves in the wind.
  Reading and writing brings them to light, so I can see them falling.
  A boy discovers magic;
  in music;
  in words;
  in paint.
  He approaches the canvas, dips his brush in color, and he paints a tree.
  It's a tree he knows well—a tree he walks by on his way home from school—and even though he doesn't quite remember what the tree looks like, he paints a leaf, falling.
  And this time he sees it.
  