A tree starts as a seed. Then it sprouts and it becomes two leaves and a little root but the seed is still there for a while. The sprout grows and soon becomes a seedling. You can’t see exactly when though. There’s no single moment when it happens. A while longer and the seedling becomes a sapling. Again, there is no moment; it happens gradually. One day, except it’s not one day, the sapling becomes a mature tree. The mature tree lives for decades or centuries, growing, changing with the seasons – blossom, leaves, fruit, rest. Eventually, the tree slows down and dies. Even dying for a tree is not a moment. Not even a traumatic death. Think of how long leaves stay green on a fallen tree. Think of how soon shoots sprout from a trunk. When a tree is finally, really dead it continues for years providing housing and food to animals, other plants, insects, fungus and bacteria.
People say, “This was this and that was that.” “I want to finish this so I can move on to that.” People want boundaries, clean breaks, delineations. These things are imaginary. In reality, you flow from one thing to the next. You ooze along. There is crossover. When you move from one city or job or relationship to another, no matter how definitive the cut, you still bring yourself. You carry the memories and effects of the old thing into the new thing. Your life is not a succession of many things. (People tell it that way because explaining the ooze takes too long.) Your life is one multi-stranded, overlapping, interconnected complex web of a thing. When you look close enough, the divisions disappear.
Observing a tree is like watching a human life in super slow motion.
Little Simz’ Flood last Monday. Doechii today. Fresh things are happening in hip hop.
Did you know that, depending on how you count them, an elephant’s trunk has 17, 40,000 or 100,000 muscles?
The answer to Friday’s Punzle: The clue was ‘I have a couple arctic bird feeding stations and a tiny mobile’ which is another way of saying ‘I’ve got two tern tables and a micro phone’, a phrase that sounds very much like ‘I got two turntables and a microphone’, a famous line from the alternative hit Where It’s At – track eight on Beck’s 1996 album Odelay.
I’ll have another Punzle for you on Friday.
Grow slowly
Jeff
This one just made me feel connected and that felt good. Thank you!