I saw something upsetting while I was walking to the gym this morning and what made it even harder was knowing that very few people would understand why it was upsetting.
I saw a huge tree being cut down at Cook and Pandora. It hurt me to see and hear the chainsaws carving into it. It felt as if I could hear its cries.
In psychosis, I believed I could communicate with the trees and the plants, not via the English language per se, but with touch. I felt like when my bare skin touched their trunks or leaves, that there was a sharing or exchange of information/knowledge. I know I can’t state that as factual but I still choose to live my life as if it is.
There’s a huge trunk of a tree behind my gym that I like talking to (aka touching) sometimes. I listened to the audiobook “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben some years back. It’s a science book.
Trees communicate through their roots. There’s fungi that help with that, it’s kind of like an internet. Phenomenal stuff. Trees will also sometimes keep their fallen comrades alive, feeding them nutrients as the fallen no longer have branches or leaves to feed themselves.
When I arrived near my gym, I went and touched the huge trunk of a tree tucked in behind the baseball diamond. It’s huge, much much bigger than me (not that I’m particularly big), but it’s just a trunk. Someone cut it down, it has no branches left. It’s sad to see, that’s why I like touching it. I ran my fingers along its bark and thought about what I’d seen just some blocks away.
This is an Art as Therapy piece I did in 2020. It’s called “The Trees are Listening”.
