What's REALLY Going ON Volume 1, June 2014 Issue #6 | Page 33

FAN TRIBUTE
Alexandra Dumitru, Bucharest, Romania

When A Leaf Falls In Summer
June 24, 2010 at 5:30pm
They say leaves don’t fall in summer and yet this
little leaf makes its way from the upper branches, twists, swirls and lands at my feet. I don’t
know why I dwell on it so much, but I stop, I pick
it up and my thoughts rush to a place I well
know. I can almost hear him, “I love – love the
planet. I love trees – I have this thing for trees
and the color and changing of leaves…I LOVE
it! I respect those kind of things. I really feel that
nature is trying to compensate for man’s mismanagement of the planet.“ Michael would say
this last year and I realize his heart had not
changed one bit since the first time I heard him
“Heal the World”; it remained in the same place
of caring, hoping, soothing, dreaming.
I now fully understand what Michael means
about that place in your heart, called Love. He
had discovered it long before and thought he
could spin this web of discovery on us too - like
all great visionaries do, when we have the
chance to have them passing our way. Sometimes we’re too young or too busy to
acknowledge them. But sometimes we recog- 33

nize them. I saw Michael, then I lost the sight of
him for a while, swirling and twirling like the little
leaf. Round the corner I had left behind, there
lay my childhood. Hearing “Heal the World” this
morning and forcing myself not to change the
program in an urge to avoid tears, I had yet another realization. The song has the same sound
as in my early days. It was unbelievable how it
made me want to pull my dad’s sleeve to go
‘wait for Michael Jackson at the airport’ or ‘get
near the stage’ or talk to my friend about how
were we’re supposed to meet MJ… It felt as real
and as unreal as that, a taste of ever present
which you know it cannot be. So my eyes stung
and I thought, how could he have this gift to pour
his heart into his music like that, in a way that he
gives timelessness and togetherness a place I
could recognize? I shuddered.

And it’s been a year. Some will maybe draw
back and say, really, one year? A few will just
say a year has never gone by so swiftly since all
eternity.
When I saw this, "God breaks the heart again
and again until it stays open", I stopped. It made
sense to me, thinking of Michael’s tribulations.
Above his genius and talents, above all backbreaking work…. there lay his human nature.
The humble, truthful kind, the kind you learn
from when you open the door. That’s what Michael did by sharing his life and I want to thank
him for that aura he managed to spread around,
such a rare thing these days... A ‘wounded messenger’ he was indeed, like someone said, carrying God’s gifts the best way he could. Teaching humbleness, for he took every misjudgment
with class and every kick of dirt with serenity…
And all this for trying to make this world a better
place. And you’d wonder, how does he do it?.. “I
got a rhinoceros skin”, Michael would say, finding peace within himself, where no naysayer
could invade, but where some of us could peek.