As I was trying to stop the whirling hyperness and go to sleep tonight, an hour ago, or so, I noticed the Bradford Pear tree in my neighbor's yard. The weather tonight is what I call pregnant. It's that thing you feel before a storm, the sort that has full potential of producing tornadoes. Some of you know this feeling, others do not, for those of you in the 'not' category, it goes like this:
The wind is very gusty, but gusty with a vengeance. It doesn't just blow from any certain direction or IN any certain direction. It's already swirly. It's really fun to play in a little if it's not too violent, because it does odd things. The sky is usually still mostly clear at this point, and this pregnant faze can last for several days. It's humid, but not necessarily hot, or cold consistently. Here, it usually gets too warm FEELING somewhere around the time of 3 or 4 pm. (that's when the layers start peeling off and the fans come on) Then the cool air hits, and it can be anywhere between 10 and 30 degrees cooler, it doesn't matter, it still feels cold by comparison, because of the humidity.
Stage set
The cool air has started to settle, and the gusty gets more agitated. So the trees don't blow, they move. They twist and shiver, wiggle and flow, everything but blow, is what they do. So this particular Bradford Pear, that I can see as I lay in my bed looking out the 2nd story window facing South, is one of the larger ones in this neighborhood.
When I first catch a glimpse of the movement, it looks like a face because of the lay of the shadows and light across it. It's past midnight, by the way, so the lights are city lights, street lights, porch lights - all artificial, except, the moon is out and it's at a little less than half it's full glory.
Then, as the shadows and light play upon the movement of the tree, it transforms, from a face into a baby woolly mammoth playing in the mud. The head is down, I can see the trunk. The shoulder is high and the hips are low, just as they should be on this particular pachyderm. It has to be a baby, because the grown beasts of this size don't play so raucously.
It's entirely too cute, almost cute enough to make me forget that I'm looking at a lusciously green tree. That green that only happens for about 2 days in the Spring before the leaves turn their darker shade Braced for Summer. LeavesAgain, not quite grown up. Just like my woolly mammoth.
It's not really a baby, baby - just young, somewhere in the range of not quite adolescent. Still cute, no signs of gangly or awkward, just precocious.
I keep looking and I notice just how oddly similar the movement of the tree as a whole really does mimic the movement of an animal with skin and fur, muscle and bone, fat and sinew. The whole thing shudders the way animals shudder when they stomp and the vibrations reverberate up the leg.
Is it my brain that gives me this moment by seeing a tree rather poorly lit and saying, 'Eyes, this can not be a tree, I need more detail for you to see just a tree.'? Or, is it my eyes that say, 'Brain, trees are trees, you can see them any time of the day or night, let's play around with this one and see what we find."?
I don't know the answer and I'm not pressed for it. I'm sure there are loads of theories and studies and think tanks willing to analyze this thought, or question until it's so worn out that no one cares anymore. That's why I already don't care to know the answer at the moment, because it would only be speculation, and it doesn't really matter.
I know what I know.
I can look at a tree and see a woolly mammoth playing in the mud and I can imagine that all the woolly mammoths aren't extinct or frozen in Siberia or somewhere in the distant Canadian tundras or wherever else they may be.
I can look back in time, so to speak, and see one, youngish, carefree and silly littlish elephanty thing play and frolic in the warmth of the moments leading up to the storm.
I can feel a little happy that I saw it, and a little melancholy that it was my imagination, instead of a window to the past.
I can wonder about my brain and eyes and how they work (or don't).
I can accept rather than obsess about the things I have yet to learn or may never learn.
These are gifts I'm thankful for regardless of the triviality or fleetingness of the moment.
....and, I can breathe.
