THE MEMORY OF TREES

I barely listen to Enya - or to New Age music for that matter - but somehow I recalled this cd when life prof put my awareness to the inquest: Do trees have rights? I responded then, as I say now, yes they do, ma'am, yes they do.

We learned about trees and we learned about trees. We, the trees and us humans, breathe each others' wastes, we were told, carbon dioxide and oxygen, respectively, and this symbiotic relationship should presuppose a symbiotic responsibility: we have as much duty to respect the trees' right to live as they have the power to protect us from the ravages of the flood. Enya herself must have put the concept in synthesis - not just thru the harmony of vocals and synthesizer - but within the phrase itself: the memory of trees. It could be a cognizance of trees' higher degree of being, as possessors of intelligence, retainers of memory; or a cognizance of our deeper responsibility to them, the trees, as specific things remembered.

There is another thing I remembered (which almost prompted me to entitle this post: one-two-tree, an epic entry, but I realized I cannot make a tribute to corn, not being a tree!) and it is what I have heard not a few times: that there are 3 things in this world which every man should do in a lifetime, namely, 1) to sire a child; 2) to write a book; and, 3) to plant a tree.

I have developed a good argument against the first but life prof's testimony to me was of a higher worth, of a deeper meaning: You don't need to have a child who came from you to become a good father; you can be the father of a child not yours, and you can be the father of a cause. It is how you raise them and stand up for them that you will be judged in the gates of heaven.

The second thing is a good thing, a noble thing, but of course this is on the assumption that you will write a good book, a noble book. Besides, if every person were to write a book, imagine the volume of paper we have to use, the number of trees we have to cut down in the process - and this brings us to the third, which has got to be number one.

EVERYONE SHOULD PLANT A TREE IN HIS/HER LIFETIME.

I did plant a gardenia tree once but was not sure if it survived. It could be a tall tree by now if it did, already showering people with fragrance from its flowers, providing them with shade from its canopy. But when it comes to trees, my strongest memory is not just in the matter of planting them, or simply in knowing and recognizing them (yes, I can distinguish birch from aspen, narra from yakal, elm from sycamore) but in climbing them. I am a great tree climber and climbing trees was a passion acquired from the solitariness of my childhood -where trees were my refuge, my second sanctuary. It was, therefore, a moment of literary triumph (from my reader's perspective) when the great Alejo Carpentier, in Explosion In A Cathedral, wrote about a character's experience in climbing a tree years passed from his childhood, in the midst of a global revolution and while a significant chapter in world history was unfolding before his eyes.

My words will never compare with Carpentier's so I'll take the liberty to quote him, and I do this for none other than the memory of trees:

'Climbing a tree is an intimate experience which can perhaps never be conveyed. A man who embraces the tall breasts of a tree-trunk is realising a sort of nuptial act, deflowering a secret world, never before seen by man. His glance suddenly takes in all the beauties and imperfections of the Tree. He discovers the two tender branches, which part like a woman's thighs and conceal at their juncture a handful of green moss; he discovers the circular wounds left behind by the fall of withered shoots; he discovers the splendid ogives of the crown, as well as the strange bifurcations where all the sap has flowed into a favoured branch leaving the other a wretched sarment, ripe for the flames. As he climbed to his vantage point, Esteban understood the secret relationship so often established between the Mast, the Plough, the Tree and the Cross. He remembered a text from Saint Hippoolytus: "This wood belongs to me. I nourish myself on it, I sustain myself with it; I dwell in its roots, I rest in its branches; I give myself up to its breathing as I give myself up to the wind. Here is my strait gate, here is my narrow path; a Jacob's Ladder, at whose summit is the Lord" '