looking at trees
A
re objects themselves, or the outside of another space? I'm used to being inside myself, so I look at a tree, and think of the tree as growing itself up. I look at the basil plant straining toward the sun in my friend's apartment: am I seeing a record of a space of light, as it's collected in another part of space that can receive it? Or do I merely see a plant which "grew because of the light" even as we know light came first.
This becomes quite grander when I look at trees. Why did each cell grow in the direction it grew? Each had to be stacked upon another, on some arrangement. Some of those forces are from its self, like the square shape of its cells, but those rules of the self are just collecting material from outside.
The shapes of branches are a tracing of light as it fell over days, years, decades. The tree doesn't recognize the nights it existed within to which we have been condemned visibility. It feels some light, and then the light disappears, and so it must strain blindly for half of its long, silent life. Each of its leaves, too, are handfuls and palms of light, water. The perfect symmetry of a tree is baffling. Doubtful that it would give its branches and leaves priority of importance over its roots.
You know we are a lucky species of mammal, having the pigment for green. They say we grew it so we could pluck out the red fruit from the green tree. Complementary colors, you see.