planet

The sky is clear today, and with last night's gusting winds, the only leaves left on the trees are the clinging ones that will stay attached all winter. It was a harsh wind. I noticed a couple of fallen tree trunks while out this morning.

With all the leaves gone, much is exposed outside: the structure and frame of trees, shrubs and flower beds. In architecture, the frame of a building can be more interesting than the final shape. That is certainly true of old barns. I saw one restored last year, that happened to be near where I walked each day at lunch. The final product is just a barn. But before it was covered up, it was an amazing network of wood, the details of the building where some say that God resides, or at least the architect's judgment and the builder's handiwork. The barn was over 125 years old and had been moved, rescued, really, from where a suburban big box store was being built in what had been a rural farm setting. Seeing the large hewn beams being lifted up, I tried to imagine the day when the original barn builder first lifted it up into place.

Which brings me to that point when I start looking at tree trunks and branches, thinking about how oddly interesting they are, wandering what I would think about them if I had never seen a tree barren of its leaves before.

I have words and mental images of trees, part of the matrix of language, culture and experience that helps me as a human navigate through the day, but if I didn't, how queer they would look, sort of the way one would think about humans if we only saw skeletons instead of the flesh, clothes and hair covering us. There is a scripture in the gospels where Jesus healed a blind man in parts, and after the first part he responds, I see men as trees walking.

The morning sun is much more severe now, at sharp brilliant angles, and there is little to filter it or soften its glowing. I saw an almost full moon amid the blue sky, after the sun had risen, lingering like those still attached leaves.

Cutting between tree branches, the light and shadows are striped on the road, finely and multiple, like the codes on packages that are scanned at a cash register.