They said this was the worst year ever and I didn't believe them. Sure everyone's hopes and dreams in the whole world were being fed through the wood chipper, but I personally was more well off. I got a little bit of time off work for a while there, which allowed me to work on art projects which was nice. And I've been making more money and working less which is great because it means more time to work on art projects. All in all its been a good (although not great) year for me working on art projects.
Certainly the evils of this year outweigh the good, but for me personally it had been a good year.
And then the neighbors across the street cut down the pepper tree. It was probably a couple hundred years old and it had been there my entire life for me. Every time I looked out the window there was an ocean of flowing green as whatever wind there was flowed through it. But some people, like Mordor Orcs, cannot abide beauty, and there is evil encamped against us. Yesterday it was there and today its just plain gone, they didn't even leave the stump. Its like if you lived in a house by the seaside and one day you woke up and found they'd just packed up the ocean and taken it away somewhere and gotten rid of it. And you'd never be able to see or hear or smell the waves coming in anymore. You'd say that was impossible but that's what happened.
So 2020 did turn out to be the worst year ever for me as well. That was December 30th when they came in there roaring away all day with their chainsaws and chippers like the unholy nuisances they are, and here I am snagged on the tail end of it and pulled down like Gandalf by the Balrog in Mordor, the way 2019 snagged us all on the tail end of it with its bat virus from China.
That got me thinking about giant trees with regard to hopes and dreams and having everything you live for smashed or destroyed. You can't just plant a two hundred year old tree, not unless you get it from somewhere else, they really don't grow up that way from seed.
So that got me thinking about life as an artist. Like a lot of artists I can never be content unless my work becomes the art equivalent of two or three hundred year old tree – no mere sapling with two or three leaves, growing in a little pot, but a vast and spreading sea of beauty – and it saddens me inconsolably to reflect that in this cruel world I will almost certainly be cut down long before that.
Its easy to say that destroying statues is merely a left wing movement and its just liberals that are trying to destroy America so if we could win all the time everything would be fine. But it isn't just liberals who partake in unspeakable acts in the destruction of beauty. I don't know what the actual political leanings are of the neighbors across the street, but it doesn't matter. As they said that tree was “just a liability” its the sort of thing anyone might do who appreciates “the value of hard work” more than the beauty of nature.
I used to think that everyone had a natural built in appreciation of the beauty of nature, but I guess some people have it more than others and some people are just a bunch of Mordor Orcs.
That tree was like a sea of flowing green feathers, and the wind of the world flowed through it, and now I will never see it again until I am reunited with it in heaven. But the sea of life flows on and I can only give the following advice for 2021 and beyond:
Batten down the hatches, and look out for squalls!
