June 14th, 2010
Location: Temple Way, behind demolished AXA building, Bristol
(I really aught to get with naming these trees.) It’s really a beautiful one. Not that it’s any less so…seems like the right thing to do. But is that some kind of tradition thing? Or something male? A need to prove my knowledge. Although it could be useful – begin to learn the properties of trees – as someone suggested today. Use this project as an educational tour. Are there trees with medical properties, or…etc. What trees are good for what? What trees make good tree houses, which are the best climbers etc. Probably lots of good reasons to mane them and learn them. And it makes this whole thing more comprehensive. So it was a fitting view from todays tree.
Just earlier I passed one of those things that brings out the Judge Dredd politics in me (the police office in the future – which is now the past – who basically has very little mercy for criminals. You get judged and sentenced there and then on the spot by Dredd. I wasn’t that into the comic, but Stallone did a pretty awful caricature of him. It should have been Clint Eastwood.) So I digress – but when I see a young tree that’s been broken off, or in today’s case pushed over by _ _ _ _ing vandals I get that Judge Dredd feeling – the Eastwood version. Demolition. Maybe it’s our chronic need for more trees, or some strange paternal instinct for the little babies! Think of the children, etc. Or maybe it was that story – I remember the horror my teacher felt over some people who had snapped a whole street of trees in half. An avenue of saplings – with broken necks. I was probably 6 and it just came back to me. Must have made an impression.
So I have fairly militant ideas about trees. If we’re going to live in a punishment based legal system then the punishment for damaging trees should be great. Perhaps it doesn’t work though. Perhaps it’s more about educating or somehow relaying a sense of reverence or sacredness of trees. How can that be done? The reality of trees really being what sustains us is taken for granted – or at least the link between those trees we see around us, those trees that give us oxygen – there is no link. It’s like breaking the ventilator, feeding you gas while you’re lying in hospital…ok, so I’m being melodramatic, but that’s how I feel about it. The building overshadowing this tree housed an insurance company there’s something intriguing about half demolished buildings. I feel like a kid looking [at] a digger – fascinated…all the layers of how it all works revealed as the sides are ripped off. Something apocalyptic about it. A ‘controlled apocalypse’ – managed. The managed apocalypse. Funny. A terrifying thought. It almost feels like that sometimes. Like these multinationals and world leaders are almost facilitating our demise – through incompetence, ignorance or bloody minded stubborn bureaucracy.
So. Insurance. It ties in quite nicely. You can’t insure the planet. It’s not like there’s another planet where, if this one gets buggered once and for all, we can get a new ecosystem from.
So to change the subject. I got chatting to a friend – and got into using the growing of trees as a metaphor for his struggling relationship…a strong tree can survive a storm, the branches – his and hers have been damaged, but the tree can live – the relationship can live, can resurrect…the added it had been chopped down – ‘their tree’. I added, and I heard this years ago – there were telegraph poles that had been set in the ground, tarred, treated, and had despite this re-sprouted roots and leaves – had been determined to live on despite our best efforts, to have them ‘work for us’ to carry our conversations. Amazing! Apparently the soil was volcanic. Highly fertile. My friend added that there were apparently olive wood tables who’s legs had regrown roots in to the ground. Presumably garden furniture. How cool is that! Resilience and hope. Even the furniture can sustain us. The question to ask is – if I climbed onto the table – would it count for climbing a tree.
