Yggdrasil

Here we go again: more tortured literary allusions relating to some aspect of the day-to-day existence of a fairly well-to-do Western human. Too often we think that we live at the end of history, that all we can do is sit back calmly and reflect somewhat dispassionately on ages past, and cultures we believe to be stuck in ages past. I, at least, don't realize how much of what goes on can be given in terms of cultures and modes of thought that should be dormant. (Honestly, how often do we see fire and brimstone raining on gay villages? Or wives turning to pillars of salt? No, our disasters tend to involve watery death from below or flesh-wasting viruses.)

Anyway, back to the main tack. They took my oak tree. This morning, city workers came and I was woken up by the sound of chainsaws. I ignored those and tried to sleep, but I could not ignore the hollow thumping when the branches came crashing down. What's worse, they didn't finish the job, leaving the once robust (now admittedly sick) tree an emacated trunk with three or four branches sticking up. It looks like one of those beach umbrellas that's been inverted by the wind, and then had its cloth covering stripped away. And tomorrow they will come and uproot it. They will reach down to the very base of the tree (to a place not even the Gods themselves have power over) and leave my yard with a crater.

What kind of tree should follow? I don't think I'm ready to make that kind of decision.

Consider: "I hung on that windy tree for nine nights wounded by my own spear. / I hung to that tree, and no one knows where it is rooted. / None gave me food. None gave me drink. Into the abyss I stared / until I spied the runes. I seized them up, and, howling, fell."