August 21, 2007
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I’m here for you. I’m here writing and thinking for you, about you.
And I don’t mean to be mean, but what are you really doing?
I’m following an old path. It winds through a city park, across a stream that feeds into the lake, the lushness, the greeness. ‘Lush’ and ‘green’ are words anyone can use to describe this place, and that’s why it’s an old path. Lush and green, the stream babbles, the lake expands open before us like a jewel, the tiny bridge over the creek allows us to start thinking in terms of about a million metaphors.
But those metaphors are all well-traveled, and you’ve been there before. You know already. Sometimes it’s nice to have favorite spots, and sometimes it’s hard to visit new ones.
This park, next to the jewel of the lake, has a beach, and people from all over the area come and sit, watching their kids splash in the water, frolicking and scaring off the ducks and geese and gulls. This, too, is an old path, because children have been doing this since there were ducks and geese and gulls.
What changes is the drama. The thin layer of interpersonal drama existing upon and made possible by the seemingly unchanging world. Drama is the old path as well, but if it were recognized as such, it wouldn’t be drama anymore. Nevertheless, that’s the fabric from which it’s made, even though it’s available in the latest fashionable colors.
I won’t go into details. You can imagine the dramas in young families, three kids, all wanting to do something different, forced to do things that are similar. You get the picture, and that just proves my point.
I’m holding a broad leaf to my face. I’m breathing in across it and exhaling back into it. I wonder if a tree can know this pleasure as much as I do. Can a tree know that it is an extension of your lungs? Can it consider the difference between oxygen and carbon dioxide beyond its capacity to asphyxiate and die? Do trees ever feel *good*? Contented? Relaxed? Does the sun feel warm, do the rains bring cleansing?
Comments (4)
Trees are amazing creatures. This makes me think of a thought – I have to paraphrase here – by Anthony Huxley in his book Plant and Planet. The gist is that trees are more alien from us than any life form ever dreamed up by a science fiction writer.
This is a lovely post, Homer.
You have clearly never read Shel Silverstein.
I always used to imagine that trees did feel pleasure and pain. The Ents seemed very real to me when I read Tolkien.
this is WOW!
this is brilliant. I love this “walk”