"Tree "
I've been in southern California for about three weeks. Not a bad place once you get over the image thing. California has this one big problem: Reality. People here don't seem to want to live in it. Could be the influence of Hollywood. Could be the gobs and gobs of money. Could just be the accumulation of all the shattered, lingering dreams throughout the history of this state, from the Conquistadors, to the gold rush, to the casting couch.
But California is a place where you can find lots of little imponderables to ponder. Lots of ways to spark your imagination. Maybe that's why Disney Land is here. Either way I found a new morsel of life to savor just last week. And, yes, I found it in Southern California.
Walking back from the gym (yes, I walk -- why use the car when the clouds are already tainted brown because of the smog?). I noticed an old tree planted by the side of the road near my apartment complex. The trunk split into four or five directions, stretching outward and upward in a twisted bundle of knots and wood and branches and leaves. Truly a beautiful tree. Had I been twelve it would have made a perfect "base" for virtually every game a child could imagine. Great tree. But what caught my eye was how this tree was almost magically illuminated by the street lamp above it. Gave it a mysterious, luminescent quality.
So I find myself walking toward this old, living, breathing, air cleaning, bird housing, car shading tree, and right next to it is the familiar red octagon.
Stop.
The sign, or was it the tree, was telling me to stop. Stop. Stop, or you will miss it. Stop, or you will pass yet another one of nature's miracles, another one of God's majestic creations, another living, breathing, growing, teaching, cleaning, feeding, aging organism with a history, a story, and a lesson. Stop, or you will miss it.
How many of us remember to stop and savor all the little things? All the life around us even in a land characterized by urban decay. How many of us learn to take a moment from the car phone, the appointment book, the mortgage payment to reflect, to consider, to wonder?
Zoom. And the cars go by. And the sign is screaming: Stop! STOP!
Stop and remember when we were children and that tree or one like it was our imaginary spaceship, our club house, our quiet shade in the heat of summer. Our "base". A place where we were safe in it's branches. Our comfort in knowing it was always there. A place where we were awed by its size, challenged by its branches. The one friend who didn't let us down even after we carved hearts and girlfriends and rock bands and even obscenities into its skin. Our "base" in tag, in baseball, in hide and seek, in our youth. Our base.
Stop. Stop, can't you hear it calling? Stop! There are no ulcers under my branches. There are no headaches cooled in my shade. Stop and think. Stop and listen. I have been here for 200 years, and I have a story to tell. Am I not still "base"?
Stop, and look what your air is doing to my leaves. Look what is left of our forest. Look what is left of our soil. Look what is left of our animals. Look what is left of your life, your childhood. Look what is left of your soul.
And in the siliconed beauty and mirrored, polished, irrigated shine of southern California, the tree still grows, and shouts with a whisper. Stop...Stop...
Stop.
