Sunrise

I actually conversed with two trees at Cabilla. the first was down by the water. This oak had a divided stem, and also I was thinking about the connections between trees, so I started asking whether "a tree" can ever be considered "one". It turned out the tree had quite a lot to say!

You ask the wrong questions. One or many? Every one is many with levels of ones. Every many is ones that make up a one. It is a question that shows a wrong way of thinking.

The oak, like me, is a guide for imagination: see the reaching with the constant changing direction? I recalibrate at every level to seek out the greatest light, which you can conceive as insight. Here's the thing, for you humans, insight is the energy you really need, like light is the energy I require. So, imagine - ha! - the way of thinking and following several paths at once, both above and below. The seeking roots assisted by communities of earth, and the seeking apical shoots drawn to light, and in both cases, like it or not, there is - whether you call it compromise or competition - the bodies of others, the rocks of the Earth. It all influences the directions taken above and below. So, follow and adjust like the scenthound, sensing where the aroma is strongest and following… or, rather, led by the agency of others as well as your own drive which pushes from behind and pulls from the as yet unknown destination.

The destination is always mystery. And when you get to where you get, to that wondrous place, you know still that all it is exceeds all that you can ever do or ever be or ever know. And that is what makes the quest; and it is always only a partial resolution. An act of sacred journeying. For you will always be left just a little note off perfection. And a note off perfection, as it happens, is the place of pure and precious beauty. It is that touch of fallibility, the vulnerable Achilles heel, that makes life more enchanting than ideal can ever be.

The photo shows the second tree, who told me their name was Sunrise. I was thinking about taking pictures, and how no picture can capture "the forest" or, indeed, "a tree".

When something is fully, and healthily, holistically, wholly, integrated, you cannot capture it. All you can do is gesture at specificities. These are not parts or fragments, but wholes in themselves, which sparkle with their own ipseity, which is in resonance with the ipseity of the greater whole. Those sparkles of essentiality, peculiarity, specificity, tell you more about the whole than any description of the whole itself ever could. Because the whole itself is beyond being described- yet its selfness, its magic, flashes through in resonance with the wholeness of these special moments or aspects. Like a certain smile IS the character of the person. That expression in the eyes.

This quotation seems to align with that message:

[W]e see the infinite not by turning away from the finite, but by looking into it: a looking-into in which the finite is not just a means to the ends of infinitude – hence I say semi-transparency, because the finite is precious in its own right, and worthy of the eye’s delay as it passes through. We see the general not by turning away from the particular, but by looking intently at it so as to see into it, whereby the value of the particular is not in any way negated, but taken up (aufgehoben) into something greater beyond. Similarly, I suggest, we find the soul not by turning away from the body, but by embracing it in a way that spiritualises the body; and we find the sacred not by turning away from the world, but by embracing it, in a move that sanctifies matter. The soul is both in and transcends the body, as a poem is in and yet transcends mere language, a melody in, yet transcends, mere sound, a painting in, yet transcends, the merely frescoed wall. - The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, Iain McGilchrist

I had climbed up into Sunrise and felt very happy cradled in their branches.

By the way, I heard a raven while I was at Cabilla, and that always gives me a boost.