¶ I was just reading about trees. I learned that although there are many art pieces that depict root systems that are not very wide, roots actually spread out in a radius significantly large. They tend to spread farther when the branches are wider or reaching higher. There are several kinds of roots, some of which are permanent and some of which are only seasonal. Anchor roots support the tree, and others give it water and nutrients. If an anchor root is cut, a large percentage of the root system may die, potentially leading to the death of the whole tree, or the toppling of it. Not very many of the roots actually go very deep, but spread out within about a foot of the surface.
¶ In forests, trees shelter each other from the elements with their branches. When a tree is alone and exposed, winds can more easily knock it down if the root system isn't sufficient to support it's heavy trunk and branches. Branches that are dead, diseased, or that rub against each other should be removed to protect the tree from sickness. Of course if too many of the branches are cut, that too will damage the tree, creating several exposed wounds and decreasing the light that can be photosynthesised. In Oregon, the neighbours cut off several of the branches on one side of a tree in my front yard. In the following months, the branches on the other side died and fell off, as if the tree was trying to get its balance back. Only the branches in the middle remained to keep it alive until a friend with more understanding of tree care could come and work with it.
¶ I also found it interesting that arborists begin to train trees when they are young, improving both their health and their aesthetic value. Properties with trees often sell for more, so construction workers like to build by trees. Unfortunately in doing so they often cut or suffocate the roots, so the home buyer looses the tree a few years later, and many people don't realize why.
¶ I'm happy to still be living among many trees. I always loved it in Oregon, looking out over my neighbourhood and seeing a forest of green. Living here, I am still surrounded by life.
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Welcome
-This is my page where I intend to share my thoughts and ideas. Some of what I post is like the paintings of René Magritte (there is no meaning intended in them). Some things I post will hopefully spark a thought in you that will lead to something good. I have stories, essays, poems, et cetera. I hope you enjoy what I've written.
-More important than that though, is what you think. Please, I encourage you to share your thoughts. Leave comments after each post to tell what's going on in your head. (click on the word "comments" below the post to do this) Don't worry too much about making sense or sounding sane, just share whatever thoughts are passing through your brain. You can go ahead and be completely random if you like. You don't even have to agree with everything you say. This is a place where your thoughts are welcome.
-You can also read comments that others have left, and leave comments that relate to those comments. Have a discussion. When you leave a comment, make sure the "e-mail follow up comments to..." box is checked so that you'll be updated if anyone else has a comment regarding the thoughts you share.
---S.Z.Q.Salway
-More important than that though, is what you think. Please, I encourage you to share your thoughts. Leave comments after each post to tell what's going on in your head. (click on the word "comments" below the post to do this) Don't worry too much about making sense or sounding sane, just share whatever thoughts are passing through your brain. You can go ahead and be completely random if you like. You don't even have to agree with everything you say. This is a place where your thoughts are welcome.
-You can also read comments that others have left, and leave comments that relate to those comments. Have a discussion. When you leave a comment, make sure the "e-mail follow up comments to..." box is checked so that you'll be updated if anyone else has a comment regarding the thoughts you share.
---S.Z.Q.Salway
Looking Glass Eyes's Facebook Wall
As Far as the Eye can See
This story is a metaphorical story that I wrote for my High School Senior English class. See if you can guess at its meaning before those who already know reveal it. (And once you know, or even think you know, or even think you don't know but feel like acting as if you do, you certainly don't have to keep it a secret from those who still don't know.)
¶ The sand had turned grey beneath the child, huddled up against the cold. Around the boy stretched nothing but this grey sand for miles and miles, and it was littered with toys and other curious objects. On the horizon all around was an impenetrable mountain range from which an impenetrable white sky rose.
¶ It was from beyond this sky that post boxes occasionally rained. They crashed down in the sand around the boy, and he opened them one by one, hoping.
¶ Many of the objects in the desert around had come from these boxes, though some the boy had created himself, and some had been there for as long as he could remember.
¶ Today, like any other, he went from one cardboard meteor to the next and found the usual contents. There were several photographs which had been painted over, usually with the same grey paint. There were weather reports. There were assorted meats, though what assortment was hard to tell as most worth eating had been burnt beyond recognition. The un-burnt meats were rotten and old, and the boy had long ago learned that eating them would make him sick. There were T.V. guides that the boy occasionally hauled to the fire pit to use as fuel. There were also, of course, lots and lots of advertisements.
¶ As the boy munched on some charcoal black mystery meat, he transcribed the return addresses from these boxes onto some he had just put postage on. Into some of these boxes he packed a few of his favourite toys that he had created. Into others he packed the meat that he would not be able to eat himself, in the hopes that it would benefit someone else. He didn't however, like to send anyone the rotten meat, as handling it too much made him sick, and would probably also make the receiver sick, so he sent as much of that as he could to the dump. For his best friend, the boy packed a box containing a sandwich he had made with meat that was only slightly burnt, and a photograph of himself that he did not paint over, except a little bit to remove the red eye.
¶ The boy sent all of these packages on trucks made of wind over the mountains, to a place that he never had, and never could go, no matter how much he wished he could. When he was done mailing the boxes he began finding ways of piecing together items from the desert to make himself new and better tools and toys. He wondered if the other children in the other deserts beneath other skies were doing the same thing. "Surely they must be." he said to himself, "Though their creations must be quite unlike mine."
¶ He enjoyed the toys he managed to build, and so, when the night came, he was fairly satisfied with how the day had gone. Maybe tomorrow he could send some of his newly invented toys to his friends. For now, he went back to the center of the desert, were he kept the most colourful items, and went to sleep for the night.
¶ The boy awoke the next morning to the sound of rain. Boxes packed full of grey items pelted the sand on the edge of the desert. One box landed a little closer to where the boy was, so it was the one he checked out first that day.
¶ This box looked familiar, and he found on the outside a stamp that read, RETURN TO SENDER. Opening it he found the photograph and sandwich he'd made for his friend.
¶ The boy shivered against the cold, and considered why his gift had been returned. Perhaps under his friends sky, there was not a desert, but a jungle were sandwiches grow on trees. Or, maybe his friend lived in a very harsh desert, and could afford no gift to give in return. Maybe there was some good reason. Maybe it had been an accident.
¶ Whatever the case, the boy distracted himself from the situation by eating the sandwich, and determining to send the photograph again, with a letter. He had practiced his handwriting a lot, though he wasn’t sure if he was getting better at writing so others cold read, or only getting better at reading his own handwriting. Whatever the case, the boy hoped that his friend wouldn’t misunderstand his letter, as postage was expensive.
¶ He went on to check the other packages that had fallen, and found mostly the usual things, as well as a few more of his toys in boxes labelled RETURN TO SENDER.
¶ He dug through weather reports looking for food. He dug through rotten meat to find something edible. He dug through burnt meat to see what of it would taste bearable. As he ate his charcoal breakfast, he gazed at a pile of rotten meat. Maybe in their desert, he thought, they don’t have fire. He swatted away a fly, then stood to distance himself from the carcass it had arrived with.
¶ Walking from cardboard box to cardboard box, passing his own belongings along the way, he gazed off at the impassable mountains that fenced him in. What existed in other lands? What was it like in the places these boxes had come from? His greatest longing was to know.
¶ He had not peeled his eyes from the walled horizon before beginning to peel the tape from another package. He would never live in any land but this, and he could accept that. He just wished someone would send photographs, postcards, something. Opening this package, he did find photographs, but they were covered in paint like others.
¶ He spent a good three hours attempting to scrape the paint off that photo, and in the end he received some satisfaction in seeing the little bit of the image that hadn’t been destroyed. There was a person under a white sky like his. The face in the image was that of the sender, whom he had corresponded with often. Previous attempts at salvaging this person’s portraits had never been terribly successful, but this attempts had resulted in the discovery of the senders eye colour. Because of this discovery, the boy was able to accept the day as being fairly satisfactory, and so that night he went to bed fairly content.
¶ The next morning, he awoke as he had the previous days. Trudging through the cold desert, he searched boxes as usual. As usual, he found little items of any great interest.
¶ Eating his black meat that day, he looked out over the massive desert, and all the items littered there. From the sky he could see more arriving in another rain of post boxes. There were so many of them, when he really thought about it. Even the impassable mountains were magnificent, and they were there for him as much as mountains were there for anyone. “I’m rich,” he said to himself, and decided he could take enough satisfaction in that to make it through the day.
¶ He trudged through the desert, with no place in particular to go. Just when he thought the rain had stopped, one more package plummeted toward the earth. It smashed into the ground in front of him, forcing him to shield his eyes as a splash of sand washed over him.
¶ Looking at the box curiously, the child felt a warmth emanating from it. As he approached it, he could smell a delicious aroma. Opening the box eagerly, he found inside another box, wrapped, with a card.
¶ The package was from one of the friends to whom he had sent many of the toys he had created. From what he could decipher of the handwriting, the card didn’t say thank you right out, but it did seem to express gratitude. If the card didn’t, then the carefully wrapped gift certainly did. He tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box inside.
¶ As soon as he lifted the lid, a refreshing warm wind poured out over the boy, carrying on it the sound of music, and several photographs. Looking inside, the child beheld a turkey, not rotten or burnt, but fresh and cooked just right with a little seasoning. His mouth watered at the sight of the juicy meal.
¶ Looking around at the photographs that had come out of the box, he beheld that they were hardly painted over at all. To his delight they showed much about the senders homeland, and answered many questions the boy had long had about the outside world. Yes, other lands had a floor of sand like his own did. Yes, other lands were surrounded by mountains of different colours. This other land was full of trees, and life, and colour. There were little furry creatures with four legs and bushy tales that ran through the branches up high. There were feathered creatures with wings that flew in the sky even higher. There were clouds shaped like elephants and sea lions.
¶ Some photos showed that a part of the forest had burned down, filling that area with ash, but even these images were beautiful to the boy, for he had never seen so many trees before.
¶ The boy gathered together some of his things, a table, tablecloth, chair, and items to set the table with. Before long he was tasting the perfectly cooked turkey. He was torn between devouring it and slowly picking it apart one tiny piece at a time.
¶ As he ate he considered all the things he would give in return. There was one tree still alive in his desert, and he could send photos of that. He could show the mountains and great stretches of item littered sand. Maybe he could even show himself. Certainly he would cook up a very nice meal to put in the box, and he would make some very good toys.
¶ As he concluded his meal, the little boy realised that the warmth from the package had drawn up moisture, and small clouds of fog decorated his surroundings. Carrying the photographs with him, the little boy grabbed his camera and skipped toward his last tree. With him the bodies of fog skipped and danced. Sitar music floated through the air.
¶ As he approached his tree, to his great surprise, the warmth and moisture had brought colour back into it, and caused it to drop its seeds. A green forest had sprung up around it, and dormant grass seeds receiving the right conditions were now sprouting up from the sand. Flowers of more colours than the little boy had seen for a very long time sprouted up all around. The rolling hills of grass rose and fell like waves, and carried on them a vessel, a finely crafted wooden boat, ordained with gold. The boy boarded and rode it across his land, taking pictures of the beauty for his beloved friend.
¶ Birds flew over head, apples danced, clouds sang, towers and a palace made of jade and ivory rose from beneath the ground and began to play organ music. The boy’s creations stood and rejoiced, marvelling at the extraordinary life that had sprung from that one, carefully assembled gift.
¶ The sand had turned grey beneath the child, huddled up against the cold. Around the boy stretched nothing but this grey sand for miles and miles, and it was littered with toys and other curious objects. On the horizon all around was an impenetrable mountain range from which an impenetrable white sky rose.
¶ It was from beyond this sky that post boxes occasionally rained. They crashed down in the sand around the boy, and he opened them one by one, hoping.
¶ Many of the objects in the desert around had come from these boxes, though some the boy had created himself, and some had been there for as long as he could remember.
¶ Today, like any other, he went from one cardboard meteor to the next and found the usual contents. There were several photographs which had been painted over, usually with the same grey paint. There were weather reports. There were assorted meats, though what assortment was hard to tell as most worth eating had been burnt beyond recognition. The un-burnt meats were rotten and old, and the boy had long ago learned that eating them would make him sick. There were T.V. guides that the boy occasionally hauled to the fire pit to use as fuel. There were also, of course, lots and lots of advertisements.
¶ As the boy munched on some charcoal black mystery meat, he transcribed the return addresses from these boxes onto some he had just put postage on. Into some of these boxes he packed a few of his favourite toys that he had created. Into others he packed the meat that he would not be able to eat himself, in the hopes that it would benefit someone else. He didn't however, like to send anyone the rotten meat, as handling it too much made him sick, and would probably also make the receiver sick, so he sent as much of that as he could to the dump. For his best friend, the boy packed a box containing a sandwich he had made with meat that was only slightly burnt, and a photograph of himself that he did not paint over, except a little bit to remove the red eye.
¶ The boy sent all of these packages on trucks made of wind over the mountains, to a place that he never had, and never could go, no matter how much he wished he could. When he was done mailing the boxes he began finding ways of piecing together items from the desert to make himself new and better tools and toys. He wondered if the other children in the other deserts beneath other skies were doing the same thing. "Surely they must be." he said to himself, "Though their creations must be quite unlike mine."
¶ He enjoyed the toys he managed to build, and so, when the night came, he was fairly satisfied with how the day had gone. Maybe tomorrow he could send some of his newly invented toys to his friends. For now, he went back to the center of the desert, were he kept the most colourful items, and went to sleep for the night.
¶ The boy awoke the next morning to the sound of rain. Boxes packed full of grey items pelted the sand on the edge of the desert. One box landed a little closer to where the boy was, so it was the one he checked out first that day.
¶ This box looked familiar, and he found on the outside a stamp that read, RETURN TO SENDER. Opening it he found the photograph and sandwich he'd made for his friend.
¶ The boy shivered against the cold, and considered why his gift had been returned. Perhaps under his friends sky, there was not a desert, but a jungle were sandwiches grow on trees. Or, maybe his friend lived in a very harsh desert, and could afford no gift to give in return. Maybe there was some good reason. Maybe it had been an accident.
¶ Whatever the case, the boy distracted himself from the situation by eating the sandwich, and determining to send the photograph again, with a letter. He had practiced his handwriting a lot, though he wasn’t sure if he was getting better at writing so others cold read, or only getting better at reading his own handwriting. Whatever the case, the boy hoped that his friend wouldn’t misunderstand his letter, as postage was expensive.
¶ He went on to check the other packages that had fallen, and found mostly the usual things, as well as a few more of his toys in boxes labelled RETURN TO SENDER.
¶ He dug through weather reports looking for food. He dug through rotten meat to find something edible. He dug through burnt meat to see what of it would taste bearable. As he ate his charcoal breakfast, he gazed at a pile of rotten meat. Maybe in their desert, he thought, they don’t have fire. He swatted away a fly, then stood to distance himself from the carcass it had arrived with.
¶ Walking from cardboard box to cardboard box, passing his own belongings along the way, he gazed off at the impassable mountains that fenced him in. What existed in other lands? What was it like in the places these boxes had come from? His greatest longing was to know.
¶ He had not peeled his eyes from the walled horizon before beginning to peel the tape from another package. He would never live in any land but this, and he could accept that. He just wished someone would send photographs, postcards, something. Opening this package, he did find photographs, but they were covered in paint like others.
¶ He spent a good three hours attempting to scrape the paint off that photo, and in the end he received some satisfaction in seeing the little bit of the image that hadn’t been destroyed. There was a person under a white sky like his. The face in the image was that of the sender, whom he had corresponded with often. Previous attempts at salvaging this person’s portraits had never been terribly successful, but this attempts had resulted in the discovery of the senders eye colour. Because of this discovery, the boy was able to accept the day as being fairly satisfactory, and so that night he went to bed fairly content.
¶ The next morning, he awoke as he had the previous days. Trudging through the cold desert, he searched boxes as usual. As usual, he found little items of any great interest.
¶ Eating his black meat that day, he looked out over the massive desert, and all the items littered there. From the sky he could see more arriving in another rain of post boxes. There were so many of them, when he really thought about it. Even the impassable mountains were magnificent, and they were there for him as much as mountains were there for anyone. “I’m rich,” he said to himself, and decided he could take enough satisfaction in that to make it through the day.
¶ He trudged through the desert, with no place in particular to go. Just when he thought the rain had stopped, one more package plummeted toward the earth. It smashed into the ground in front of him, forcing him to shield his eyes as a splash of sand washed over him.
¶ Looking at the box curiously, the child felt a warmth emanating from it. As he approached it, he could smell a delicious aroma. Opening the box eagerly, he found inside another box, wrapped, with a card.
¶ The package was from one of the friends to whom he had sent many of the toys he had created. From what he could decipher of the handwriting, the card didn’t say thank you right out, but it did seem to express gratitude. If the card didn’t, then the carefully wrapped gift certainly did. He tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box inside.
¶ As soon as he lifted the lid, a refreshing warm wind poured out over the boy, carrying on it the sound of music, and several photographs. Looking inside, the child beheld a turkey, not rotten or burnt, but fresh and cooked just right with a little seasoning. His mouth watered at the sight of the juicy meal.
¶ Looking around at the photographs that had come out of the box, he beheld that they were hardly painted over at all. To his delight they showed much about the senders homeland, and answered many questions the boy had long had about the outside world. Yes, other lands had a floor of sand like his own did. Yes, other lands were surrounded by mountains of different colours. This other land was full of trees, and life, and colour. There were little furry creatures with four legs and bushy tales that ran through the branches up high. There were feathered creatures with wings that flew in the sky even higher. There were clouds shaped like elephants and sea lions.
¶ Some photos showed that a part of the forest had burned down, filling that area with ash, but even these images were beautiful to the boy, for he had never seen so many trees before.
¶ The boy gathered together some of his things, a table, tablecloth, chair, and items to set the table with. Before long he was tasting the perfectly cooked turkey. He was torn between devouring it and slowly picking it apart one tiny piece at a time.
¶ As he ate he considered all the things he would give in return. There was one tree still alive in his desert, and he could send photos of that. He could show the mountains and great stretches of item littered sand. Maybe he could even show himself. Certainly he would cook up a very nice meal to put in the box, and he would make some very good toys.
¶ As he concluded his meal, the little boy realised that the warmth from the package had drawn up moisture, and small clouds of fog decorated his surroundings. Carrying the photographs with him, the little boy grabbed his camera and skipped toward his last tree. With him the bodies of fog skipped and danced. Sitar music floated through the air.
¶ As he approached his tree, to his great surprise, the warmth and moisture had brought colour back into it, and caused it to drop its seeds. A green forest had sprung up around it, and dormant grass seeds receiving the right conditions were now sprouting up from the sand. Flowers of more colours than the little boy had seen for a very long time sprouted up all around. The rolling hills of grass rose and fell like waves, and carried on them a vessel, a finely crafted wooden boat, ordained with gold. The boy boarded and rode it across his land, taking pictures of the beauty for his beloved friend.
¶ Birds flew over head, apples danced, clouds sang, towers and a palace made of jade and ivory rose from beneath the ground and began to play organ music. The boy’s creations stood and rejoiced, marvelling at the extraordinary life that had sprung from that one, carefully assembled gift.
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