Sublime

Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as the black birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter;

zelkova tree

“You live between three trees. One is behind you. The Lote—the tree of life for your Persian ancestors. The tree at the boundary of the seventh heaven, that none may pass.

It’s a single tree with two sexes, older than the separation of yin and yang, the Tree of Renewal, the tree at the universe’s center, the hollow tree housing the sacred Tao.

This part’s always disagreeable, the brute scramble up towards daylight. He burrows through clay, grabs at roots, until the earth falls away and he’s looking up at a vaguely yellow sky.