“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”
– William Blake, quoted in Epiphany of a Middle-Aged Pilgrim by Peter Wortsman
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“I have said my life has been passed in the shade of a nonexistent tree…It was planted sixty years ago by a boy with a bucket and a toy spade in a little Nebraska town. That boy was myself. It was a cottonwood sapling and the boy remembered it because of some words spoken by his father and because everyone died or moved away who was supposed to wait and grow old under its shade. The boy was passed from hand to hand, but the tree for some intangible reason had taken root in his mind. It was under its branches that he sheltered; it was from this tree that his memories, which are my memories, led away into the world. After sixty years the mood of the brown wasps grows heavier upon one. During a long inward struggle I thought it would do me good to go and look upon that actual tree. I found a rational excuse in which to clothe this madness. I purchased a ticket and at the end of two thousand miles I walked another mile to an address that was still the same. The house had not been altered. I came close to the white picket fence and reluctantly, with great effort, looked down the long vista of the yard. There was nothing there to see. For sixty years that cottonwood had been growing in my mind. Season by season its seeds had been floating farther on the hot prairie winds. We had planted it lovingly there, my father and I, because he had a great hunger for soil and live things growing, and because none of these things had long been ours to protect. We had planted the little sapling and watered it faithfully, and I remembered that I had run out with my small bucket to drench its roots the day we moved away. And all the years since it had been growing in my mind, a huge tree that somehow stood for my father and the love I bore him. I took a grasp on the picket fence and forced myself to look again.”
– Loren Eiseley, The Night Country
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Loren Eiseley breaks my heart. There is such heavy sadness in his writing. And a sense of loneliness.
I cannot read too much at a time for fear of being tipped into my own undercurrents of melancholy.
But Eiseley’s view of the world connects to something deep within me. I am so glad to have found him.
Dealing with the practicalities of a single lifetime, there are an infinite number of occasions, events, conversations and memories for us to wrest into some sort of coherence.
However, we are saved from overwhelm by our subconscious self: that part of us that knows if we find something interesting or not.
I do not need to deliberately select a memory for it to hold significance. It is already held aloft in my mind for me to simply notice.
Why some memories and not others?
I don’t know. I’ll probably never know for sure.
Perhaps that is why I read and write – I want to figure out what is important to me.
I am attempting to cultivate my recognition of significance.
What claws at my brain demanding recognition?
Who shall I share it with? Everyone and no one.
There are no physical barriers preventing the billions of internet users from accessing my thoughts here.
But because every other human being has their own automatic search and sort mechanism, it is natural that I remain unnoticed.
It is enough for me to notice what moves me and to leave my brief remarks.
Like a skin shed and left aside, if I address what troubles me, will I be able to slither along anew?
Or am I adding layers to my shell as protection from the outside world, waddling ever slower?
Whatever the consequences, seen or unseen, from engaging and writing about what I find significant, I have done it. And it feels good.
Conversations With Quotations 