Trees - the thisness
Around the small pond in the muddy field stand eight herons in the form of trees. Three oaks, three alders, a willow and hawthorn. I have found a bounty of thisness.
'Whatness' - the essence of, say dog, that makes a dog a dog.
Dogs and people have a lot of thisness. Robins, on the other hand don't, they all pretty much follow the same robin blueprint.
What else can rival dogs and people in their thisness - well I'd say trees. These trees in particular. Two of them.
The first one is a hawthorn. Two forks of tree lightning. Siamese twin trunks - conjoined and symbiotic at the ground, then living their own lives more and more as they ascend. At tree top height each has almost forgotten it ever had a brother.
The right hand hemi-trunk has a gnarled, rugged exterior - it is being regulation hawthorn. But, almost straight from a builder's yard, the inside is bare wood.
And it is revealing its workings. Showing the sums. Like one of those anatomical models where you remove a piece to see the heart or lungs, this tree has a hollowed out section. I can see inside and see the hawthorn ghost in the hawthorn machine.
The second tree is a willow. A trunk emerges right at the water's edge. Then, as if having a change of heart, almost immediately it dolphins itself and dives back into the water. A woody loop stitches the bank to the water. A sea serpent has swallowed a tree.
A few metres further into the pond it longs for the terrestrial life again. It re-surfaces, this time with a renewed sense of purpose, branching off into a barn dance of slender drooping lines - of willow.
I can confidently say that no other trees exist like these two in the world. They are each a law unto themselves. They conform to nothing - have no equivalents. Even the most characterful of people, at the very least, follow the 'person' blueprint.
Is this here, by a small pond, the peak of thisness?
(Quiddity is the term from philosophy for whatness, Haecceity is thisness)
Comments
Post a Comment