Some days I think I’ll be shocked if there is a future.
It’s just an idea in our heads anyway, like the past we also think is real. And the idea I’ve been seeing in my head lately isn’t one that makes me want to stick around. I’ll bet it’s always been this way, however: that at any given time, a substantial portion of the population is completely gonzo loony, I mean. Especially the “leaders.” Pick a country, any century. Have we ever been on anything but a slow death spiral since the dawn of recorded history? Only mostly without atom bombs. Seems to me that our species is either metaphysically ill or fatally flawed. If I believed the latter, there wouldn’t be much point in getting out of bed (or climbing into one), so I’ll opt for spiritual indigestion.
Ponderosa pine, upper San Cristobal valley
I’ve been dreaming of trees a lot lately. BIG trees, tall primeval trees. Great Mother symbols. Always had a hard time cutting one down, no matter where I was or how great the need to do so. Thinking back to ancient kingdoms in Greece and elsewhere that willingly cut down all the trees, I’ve decided that the ability to do that is a mark of deep dysfunction. Accordingly, if you can cut a tree down or even prune a branch without at least a tiny bit of doubt or hesitation, you’re an an evolutionary throwback.
Harsh, perhaps. But that’s as good an indicator of not “getting it” as I can come up with this morning. I’ve never trusted any man who could fell a tree without looking deep inside and making some kind of peace with himself and what he had to do.
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I like trees quite a lot, maybe all the more so for having, like you, spent early years in a place without many of them – West Texas. But Farr, you old rascal, you want me to choose between Plato and Joyce Kilmer. I don’t want to choose, but, if I must, I’ll take trenchant thinking, whatever the source and even if tainted by herbiphobia! (Hope you don’t mind being teased on the subject – the prerogative of an old amigo.)
(Señor Webb, for those of you who don’t know, is part of the Original Club. He writes from Canada and really isn’t herbiphobic at all.)
And good of you to mention Plato, Kenny. Talk about original sin…
I like being part of the Original Club. That sounds like a defined term. Does it mean “knowing Farr when neither he nor I knew which end was up”? –If so… since I still don’t know which end is up, and Farr may not either, and nobody else does, that could be a pretty big club.
That just came to me. And rather than rattle on at length about what that might mean, I think I’ll just leave it where it is.
Having done a lot of pruning this last week, I have to say I know what you mean. And watching our neighbors cut down their huge pine was heartbreaking. I still haven’t really forgiven them. They said it was tearing up their foundation, I said it would be better to keep the tree and tear down the house…