John and I had previously decided that one portion of his show yesterday would be devoted to trees...we'd play some songs about trees and I would read something appropriate. But when I looked through my collection of recorded music at home, I found that I didn't have as many songs about trees as I'd thought. So I showed up with about six songs, some of which elasticized the subject of trees to include dogs (it's hard to deny that there's a strong connection between dogs and trees). I also brought along two books by Donald Culross Peattie, one of my favorite authors, and arguably one of the most eloquent writers to ever set pen to paper on the subject of trees.
The problem was that yesterday happened to be election day in California. Sadly, as we now know, California Governor Gray Davis was about to be recalled, and the Terminator was about to replace him. John and I had to discuss "Ahnold" at some length, and that we did. John had even recorded a little "bumper" of audio spliced together from the "Terminator" movies, with screams of agony, Schwarzenegger yelling "Send in the choppah!", and finally, his signature "Hasta la vista, baby" at the end. By the time we had kicked Ahnold around for awhile, and I had taken my usual digs at the idiots in L.A. (which is expected of me at this point), the whole idea of shifting gears and addressing ourselves to the subject of trees seemed far-fetched, even to us, who were used to such broadcast surrealism.
Nonetheless, we played the CD's and LP's I had brought, and then after a little discussion of trees and wood (how wood is an ideal material for many uses, except perhaps for the personalities of would-be politicians who spoke English, well, woodenly), it was time for me to read from Peattie. John put on the appropriate background music ("April Wind" by Pat Metheny, c. 1977), I took off my glasses (can't read with them on anymore), found my place, cleared my throat, and began. I got off to a fair start. I'm a good enough reader, as long as I don't think about what I'm reading. But Peattie isn't the sort of author you ignore while reading him aloud. Here is what I had to read:
"There is morning light here, shafting down through the live oaks in smoky beams. After the night's rain that washed away a six months' summer dust, the little dark leaves gleam and twinkle. Softened, the brilliant sunshine is released by them to the fronds of the tree ferns that grow below, outstaying their day by geologic ages...Never so beckoned the green world, or the sky or the sea...Close at hand the wild tangle of the chaparral, sunbaked, sends up a pillar of incense. All of the life that is not ours, the other half, by which and with which we the animal life share earth, holds up its hands to the sunshine..."
Something was caught in my throat. My chest was aching. My eyes were swimming. I couldn't see the page before my eyes. I almost panicked. I couldn't break down in mid-paragraph and make a total and utter fool of myself...especially during prime time!
"...As the brain of man is the speck of dust in the universe that thinks, so the leaves -- the fern and the needled pine and the latticed frond and the seaweed ribbon -- perceive the light in a fundamental and constructive sense. The flowers looking in from the walled garden through my window do not, it is true, see me. But their leaves see the light, as my eyes can never do. They take it, as it forever spills away radiant into space in a golden waste, to a primal purpose. They impound its stellar energy, and with that force they make life out of the elements. They breathe upon the dust, and it is a rose..."
I was really choked up now. I mumbled, "Jeez, this is beautiful," as if that explained my pathetic reading, and tried to go on.
"...Say that this is done with neither thought nor passion, and by something other than will. True that a plant may not think; neither will the profoundest of men ever put forth a flower..."
Tears were catapulting down my cheek. I tried not to think what John -- or far worse, what that vast faceless audience out there -- was thinking. Totally humiliated, I went on. And got infinitely less comprehensible as the text became more exquisite and finally reached its eloquent conclusion.
"...Of the use and the beauty of flowering there can be no shade of doubt. It is a rare thought of which as much can be said...This serene sister life, this green society, was here before us; we are wholly dependent upon it; it reaches farther over and into our common earth and leaves a deeper imprint there than we do or our fellow creatures...There are always some of us, not a few, in every generation, who go over wholly to the green flag. It is such a passionless fealty [I begged to differ with Mr. Peattie], so reticent a love [sniff], that neither do trumpets sound for it nor quarrels arise from it. Only, you will find that those who have pledged allegiance are happy about it in quiet."
(From "Flowering Earth", Donald Culross Peattie, 1939; reprinted 1991 by Indiana University Press)
I finally wheezed to a halt and put the book down. John, ever sensitive to other people's emotional states, made a neat transition to some music, and the awkward moment passed. But my mortification didn't. I thought about it all night...didn't sleep particularly well. What was it about Mr. Peattie's sentiments that struck such a profound chord in me that I was reduced to a blubbering idiot?
I suggest you read any of Donald Culross Peattie's books and see for yourself. Just don't read them out loud. Especially not on the radio!
