I can hear the voices of 2 dozen students behind me right now. I smell coffee and burnt toast. I am sitting on a fairly uncomfortable chair. I am in the Palm Beach Community College "cafeteria." There is a fairly unappetizing, cafeteria and a Dunkin' Donuts counter. Guess where everyone is buying food? Nate treated me to breakfast this morning--two plain cake donuts, a medium hot chocolate, and milk. He ordered and ate the better part of a coffee roll (like a glazed donut, but with swirls of cinnamon throughout). He also ordered a medium hot chocolate and breakfast egg-sausage-cheese-on-a-slightly-squashed-sandwich. He consumed a little of each of these. He's off to class--a success in college thing--that has had him produce a PowerPoint presentation entitled "Mechanical Engineer" and make a trip to his counselor for a signature verifying that he has looked beyond the end of this semester to the classes he needs to take to graduate. Because of which, I have listened to him express repeated and vehement disapproval. Because of which, he has had two very productive and positive experiences--which he will look back on with satisfaction in the years to come.
Using the word "squashed" reminds me of a short story I read last night by Ursula Le Guin. It has a tree talking about how the world around him changes as he figures out his roll as a young and then giant oak tree. He speaks of having to travel quickly from small to tall and then back to small again--as people pass by him. He loves a canter--ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum--as a horse approaches and then passes him. There is also the skill of appearing to come toward and then fade into the background of people passing from both sides at once. Something of an autonamus procedure--kind of like how we have our heart beating and our lungs exchanging waste gasses for oxygen as we breathe. He misses squirrels and birds when the dirt path beside him becomes a cement roadway. (Here he tells that the squirrels learn to leave the area or get "squashed" under the wheels of automobiles that he must rush toward and then pass behind in a jerking, breathless dash. He does not like it when this happens.) And he discusses his distress at the change required of him as cars (made things) come into use. It is a glorious glimpse into the psyche of a being that we take for granted as a "living-but-voiceless-and-unthinking" creature.
My favorite part is at the beginning when he tells of how, occationally, he needs to stand still and the humans come to him, sit and lean back on his trunk and rest. These few motionless hours he finds rewarding as people trust him with their time and bodies when they sit, rest and sometimes sleep. It is a sweet reminder of Silverstein's "The Giving Tree."
