A Vagabond Under the Dreaming Tree
On the bluff above the river where we gather to eat oysters and crab a giant oak teeters on the edge of an ancient tabby wall. Between the wall and the river, the ground drops twenty feet and the tree leans that-a-way over the void. Away from the wall, under the ground, his roots entwine with a brother oak a hundred feet away. The two trees support and feed each other through their shared roots. The adventurous tree standing on the wall hangs on to his brother, balances over the void and reaches out into the vast soft light over the river. His fern covered crown tips toward the river, he feels for the ground below, basks in the sunshine and pumps water 40 feet high. He and his brother have clung to each other and danced along this wall for 250 years.
They are slow motion vortices of light, water and energy manifest as trees. Like us, they are nodes in Indra's net containing, reflecting and dependent on all other nodes.
They are God masquerading as trees.
Today is a sweet song bird morning. Wrens, mockingbirds, chickadees and titmice sing up the sun. Dew sparkles on the grass in the lawn below and the sun lit moss in the trees looks like giant golden-green icicles.
A wiry old man approaches the tree with sadness and wonder. He wears worn sneakers with no socks, soiled khaki pants and a collared plaid shirt stained with grease and paint. His brown knapsack contains a blanket, a bowl and little else. He calls himself Martin and spent last night huddled in the gazebo below the tree after shuffling through town. Broken, abandoned by family, he has rambled and suffered for years.
Martin sits on the gigantic roots, dangles his feet over the wall, runs his fingers deep into the massive, cracked bark. He touches the tree, feels its bark and massive presence. So too does the ancient tree touch him - feels his skin, hears his heart thump, knows his sadness.
Martin closes his eyes, empties his torn mind and listens to bird-song and tree-speak - hears silence and hears everything. Together, he and the tree begin to dream.
A tall, warrior shaman appears, two plaited braids of grey-black hair past his tattooed shoulders. He wavers in the light and becomes more flame than man, more smoke than flesh - vision, not object. He is tree, he is man, he is ghost. His voice low and growly, is inside Martin's head, a telepathic transmission of sight, sound and history beyond language and thought - the timeless magic voice of sensuous Earth.
He sings of a people who speak through the air without looking into each others eyes, without seeing each others bodies, without connection. Their electro-speech is a frantic, jangling, cacophony of threats, fads, nonsense, blather and advertising. Noise with no value, designed to sell trivial things in exchange for false, contrived money. The people put all their faith into these things and the bogus value. They worship the production, selling and collection of useless things. They worship illusory money.
Such is their god.
Martin exhales a long sigh gently through his mouth.
The shaman transforms into a beautiful blue-eyed coyote sitting on the root next to him. Coyote speak sounds in his mind - these people fly - FLY! - Not flit or soar - they machine fly - captive in the belly of metal dragons they build to scream high and fast on fire breath and poison vapor. On the ground too, roaring metal chariot-cocoons haul them mindless over miles of bleeding asphalt paved earth. They get stuck and tangled in long snaky lines of snarling machinery and shimmering heat. For this they congratulate themselves.
Such achievements they find grand and satisfying.
Martin takes a deep inhale of sweet jasmine scented river air.
The coyote continues - The people dam rivers, flood canyons, drain swamps, log forests, strip-mine hills, level mountains, irrigate deserts, pollute water, burn jungles, dump their heat and waste in the ocean and air. They kill each other to protect property and get more. Where there is plenty, they see scarcity. They live in fear that someone will take what they claim and so they hate and kill.
And of this they are proud.
Martin hears the airy chatter of an osprey soaring above the marsh.
The coyote transforms into a withered old black man dressed in rags clutching a jug of liquor.
He leers at Martin, knows his weakness, leans close and says - This too shall end - and touches a dirty, bony finger to Martin's forehead. The sky rips apart red-black and Martin hears the earth cry, sees her twitch and shiver as the human machine/storm tears her open. Martin feels the hot air, sees the ice melt and the massive swirling ocean storms whip ashore. Unholy plagues swarm 'round the earth and a foul banshee wind screams. The people scurry for shelter but their mechanized, hyper society has neither the capacity nor the ability to counteract Earth's furor.
Huge fiery holes rip through Indras bejeweled net.
It does not have to be this way, says the derelict.
When the money is gone, and the blather stops; when palmetto and pine overgrow the cracked concrete and rubble of forgotten industry; when the sky-scraper tombs of death trap cities crumble; when tanks, bombs and machine guns are forever forgotten; when a man's color means nothing, slavery is forgotten and strangers are celebrated; Then, a free and wild people will roam these islands, rivers and marshes. They will fish and hunt with respect and reverence; live and work together in cooperation, harmony and peace; produce art and babies; good food, music and beer. They will dance and sing around oak fires in wild meadows to music made on wooden instruments so sweet the gods themselves dance to it by the light of the mystic moon rising over the eternal river.
He gives Martin a deep draw of fiery liquid. It warms his belly, quiets his mind, quenches his thirst. Martin hears the quiet murmur of voices and opens his eyes.
Where was an empty park, now a gentle people gather in the meadow under the natural cathedral of the ancient tilted oak in dappled light cast through arcing branches. Hobbled horses graze the grass. Dogs pant in the shade or chase little ones across the meadow. Canoes, kayaks and a small sailing sloop line the river bank. Some people sit on piles of rock and timber; the ruins of the past. The tree shelters them and under it they pray, dance, eat and tell stories. Crab and oysters cook over a smoky fire. Martin slides off the root and into the meadow, is offered a warm slice of bread and honey.
This morning too, I walk my dog - Echo - through the park past the tree. Construction crews shout to each other in Spanish as their machines tear up the ground behind the tree to pave a large parking lot for a swank restaurant/hotel/condo development. The pavement is mere feet from the ancient roots. It will be a miracle if the tree survives the onslaught. Echo sprints up the slope to the base of the tree, gallops back down, laughing, oblivious to the menace.
She stops to sniff a pair of old sneakers. Of Martin, there is not a sign.
This, on the bluff above the river where we gather to eat oysters and crab.