http://www.martinwestlake.eu/curtains/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:14:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://www.martinwestlake.eu/curtains/comment-page-1/#comment-1243 Un arbre dans la ville Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:54:54 +0000 http://www.martinwestlake.eu/?p=1182#comment-1243 Each morning when going to work just before getting down to the metro stop which is a few hundred meeters away from my door, I used to enter a parallel world, my own 'green philter' and oxigen provider: a beautiful curtain of trees in my street allowed me to stop by one tree or the other, and press the palm of my hand on their skin, like feeling their pulse and loading up with their energy, or passing a message over and receing one from nature before entering the mashine-dominated underground world. I did no this every morning (because there are also some roses one can smell as well as another zen choice) but when taking the time to do so, it was such a delight. When moving house here, three years ago, the trees were higher, and I had once a year to live up with the shock of seing them half amputated of their branches. But in a way that was for better: they grew even more harmoniously afterards. These were tall trees, 30-40 m high, and probably same equivalent in years of age. Why I write this: at the end of this week coming back from work they were all gone. And the horror of it is still here every day I pass now in front of little piles of tree remnants, piles of ashes looking like the blood of the trees left there for testimony to the walkers and dogs passing by every morning. I don't know why they were cut down. This made me recall of your post on this matter, and I have to admit it, one never really understands well something until he or she has to really experience it live. It is painful. It does feel like a totally empty space. And those trees had a life of their own, even prisoners of the concrete wold we live in, even if wearing a plate with a number, even having lost repeatedly half of their brunches and having had made the effort to grow back and get new shelters to birds and new traces of life up there for the forth floor inhabitants accross the street to gaze on. I would just recall a gong of a well known French artists, Maxime Leforestier (well fated name) 'Comme un arbre dans la ville', and I would like to make a plea for some law obliging townhalls to plant 3 trees for each of the ones they cut for some reason or another. Each morning when going to work just before getting down to the metro stop which is a few hundred meeters away from my door, I used to enter a parallel world, my own ‘green philter’ and oxigen provider: a beautiful curtain of trees in my street allowed me to stop by one tree or the other, and press the palm of my hand on their skin, like feeling their pulse and loading up with their energy, or passing a message over and receing one from nature before entering the mashine-dominated underground world. I did no this every morning (because there are also some roses one can smell as well as another zen choice) but when taking the time to do so, it was such a delight. When moving house here, three years ago, the trees were higher, and I had once a year to live up with the shock of seing them half amputated of their branches. But in a way that was for better: they grew even more harmoniously afterards. These were tall trees, 30-40 m high, and probably same equivalent in years of age.
Why I write this: at the end of this week coming back from work they were all gone. And the horror of it is still here every day I pass now in front of little piles of tree remnants, piles of ashes looking like the blood of the trees left there for testimony to the walkers and dogs passing by every morning. I don’t know why they were cut down.
This made me recall of your post on this matter, and I have to admit it, one never really understands well something until he or she has to really experience it live. It is painful. It does feel like a totally empty space. And those trees had a life of their own, even prisoners of the concrete wold we live in, even if wearing a plate with a number, even having lost repeatedly half of their brunches and having had made the effort to grow back and get new shelters to birds and new traces of life up there for the forth floor inhabitants accross the street to gaze on.
I would just recall a gong of a well known French artists, Maxime Leforestier (well fated name) ‘Comme un arbre dans la ville’, and I would like to make a plea for some law obliging townhalls to plant 3 trees for each of the ones they cut for some reason or another.

]]>