TWO WAYS THROUGH

TWO WAYS THROUGH

     “Tell me about this tree.”

     “It’s just an ordinary tree.”

     “Hmm, I suppose.  But you’ve mentioned it before, several times, in fact.  Have you noticed how, whenever we seem to be getting at something, this tree comes up?”

     “It’s just a tree.  In my yard.”

     “Is it a female tree?”

     “How should I know?”

     “I mean, how do you think of it?  Do you think of it as a female?  A male?”

     “It’s just an ordinary tree.  A member of the maple family, A. Saccharinum.  The silver maple.  No one would think to look at it twice, it’s so much like any other of its kind one might see anywhere.  It drowses, as trees do, heavy with leaves, all summer and musters the gay assizes in the fall.”

     “The gay assizes?”

     “The decree of nature, you know what I mean, trees pronounce the coming of winter.  It’s just a figure of speech.”

     “I see, go on.”

     “Sometimes its leaves bear little knotted galls that look like warts.  Sometimes a strong wind will tear off a branch and scatter its leaves all over.  Appropriate enough, for what it is.”

     “Seems harmless enough.  We were talking about your daughter’s coldness and aloofness towards you.  You were describing an incident when she had disappeared and you found her clothes in the street.  Remember?”

     “Yes, I said we found her stark naked in the house on the corner, and she wouldn’t come when I came to the door.”

     “You and your wife were terrified, remember?  You feared the worst.”

     “Yes, I just told you that.”

     “But then you said the tree makes you bow your head in front of it.”

     “I did, didn’t I.”

     “The mind doesn’t put two mental states like that together for no reason at all, you know.  I want you to look for the connection.  Just tell me what comes to mind when you think about the tree and your daughter.”

“People tend to think of trees as feminine, in spite of their coarse bark and column-like trunks.  Imagine what people say about that huge Norway maple on the hillside—you know the one, just outside of town—trilling its scarlets and yellows to the townsfolk below: “Isn’t she a beauty?”  Does anyone ever say, “Isn’t HE a beauty?”  Never.  The problem lies in us, Horatio.  Despite this tendency to think of trees, especially maples, as female, this tree is male. . . .”

“Go on, don’t stop.  This tree is male.”

“I really don’t see the connection.  That’s what I’m saying.  This tree is male.  It’s got nothing to do with my daughter.”

“Let me determine that.”

“It might have more to do with my father.”

“Tell me about it.  Why do you think that?”

     “The first time it spoke to me I thought it was my father.  Only problem is my father was dead.  Had been for ten years.  That was too much, too strange for me.  That voice.  I wanted to know why that voice and not some other.  But I was never satisfied as to that.  We never “dialogued.”  If you know what I mean.

     “I’m not sure I do.  This tree spoke to you?”

     “It still does.”

     “I see.  Interesting.  Tell me about it.”

“It has this way of making pronouncements.  I have to stand in front of it with my head bowed.  Then it gives forth.  If it is autumn, and I am wearing my hat, it isn’t enough to bow.  I have to take the hat off, too, and stand in front of it with my head bowed and my hat in my hands.”

“Tell me about the hat.”

“It’s my hat.  I’ve been wearing it for years.  It’s a fishbone weave, light brown fedora with a feather in the band.  I wear it when it begins to get cold.  My hair has thinned, as you can see.  My head gets cold.  So I wear this hat.  I like it, so I have kept it.  I’ve been wearing it from fall to spring for maybe ten years, now.”

“Let’s get back to the tree.  You bow in front of it, and it makes pronouncements.”

“Of course, after it loses its leaves, it’s done for the year.  And in the spring, when it’s leafing out again, it ignores me.  No bowing and scraping can get it to notice me then.”

“Your father’s voice.  Why do you think it speaks in his voice?” 

“I know you think it’s strange that it speaks in my father’s voice.  You think, because of that, it’s all in my head.  Well, why shouldn’t you?  I can’t blame you for thinking that.  But it’s a mystery.  I never could solve it.  Sometimes we just have to accept things.  When the earthquake strikes and ruins houses and roads and tall office buildings, no one asks Why?  Why now?  Why me?  We just accept it and get on with our lives.  So, it speaks with my father’s voice and not some other’s.”

“Don’t make judgements about what I think.  What I think is not relevant.  What we’re trying to get at is what you think.”

“I’m sorry.  You’ve told me that before.  So?”

“So, tell me more about this tree.  Is it, in your mind, your father?  Do you think of this tree as, in some way, identical with your father?”

“I see what you’re getting at.  My father’s advice is needed, but he’s dead.  So I imagine this tree as the means by which he reaches me, as though from beyond the grave.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It would be comforting if it were so.  But no.  That never occurred to me.  The tree is itself, unique, distinct, profound, and certainly not human.”

“Why did the tree come up just now when we were talking about your daughter?  You haven’t established a connection yet.  Do you want to try to get back to that?”

“You think, perhaps, that I’m so disturbed by my daughter’s coldness I need my father’s advice to deal with her.  Not so.  My daughter’s attitudes are one part of a much larger picture, a whole life situation.”

“But isn’t her affect on you the very thing that has brought you here?"

“That’s what I told you in the beginning.”

“So, it’s more complicated.  You have other problems you haven’t mentioned.  Ahh. . . !  The silence is eloquent.  Think through what you want to say, take your time.”

“It’s the tree.”

“OK, tell me.”

“Sometimes the things it says have no affect on me.  I just ignore them.  I can easily forget.  I have forgotten, in fact, most of the things it has said.  But sometimes it says things I cannot forget, and the more I think about them, the worse I feel about everything.  I cannot, as I said before, ask it to explain itself.  It never responds to ME.  It is, maybe, too proud to stoop to that.  I feel it rather likes making pronouncements, then watching to see what effect they have, and feels itself successful when I start to cry. . . .”

“Don’t stop.  We’re making progress.  Take your   time. . . .  Why not go back to the tree making you cry?  Tell about that.” 

“I can assure you, there are things it says I cannot forget, things a person shouldn’t know.  You perhaps think there is nothing a person shouldn't know.  Knowledge is power.  People should know everything there is to be known, for their own good, obviously.  But I can tell you from experience there are things we shouldn't know.  The rule is, it's OK to know anything we can forget, even if it takes a lifetime of effort.  Believe me about this.  There are some things we cannot forget, some things that no effort will make us forget.  We should not know these things.  For our peace of mind; for our everlasting peace of mind.”

“For example?”

“For example, I cannot look at children anymore with the same old feeling of gladness the sight of them used to arouse in me.  I will not say, NOTHING WILL DRAG FROM ME, what that lofty A. Saccharinum told me about children.  But I will hint, though it tear my heart out and leave me the very sign and token of hallucinatory madness.  Once, visiting the paddocks where my daughter worked grooming horses when she was a teen, I saw a mare give birth. . . .”

“Go on.  Do you want to tell me about it or would you rather change the topic?” 

“She was on her side, the mare, that is, attended by  a vet; my daughter was on her knees in the dry hay beside the struggling mare’s head, stroking her neck. . . .”

“Go on, don’t stop.”

“First, the two little forehooves, side by side, then the nose, slick and black, nostrils flaring, then the rest of the head up to the eyes, wide open, then the ears, and then, in one swift greasy slide, the whole body.  As it came forward, the foal’s eyes, wide open and filled with horse-wonder, caught sight of me, and I saw in them the immense, shocking foreknowledge of existence, that which we cautiously call the creaturely instinct of life.  I say cautiously, because we blind ourselves to this knowledge and to all that it implies. Suffice it to say that the eyes of children have new meanings for me now.  I stay away from them whenever possible and am leery of them when I can’t.  To bear such knowledge alone is a crushing burden.  But to share it is impossible, simply out of the question.”

“Birth is life’s originating trauma.  To experience it is to be initiated into life’s greatest mystery.  Men can’t enter this mystery, though, but they can and do witness it.  More than one man has felt what you felt when that foal was born.  The imagination strives to comprehend the experience, and in the effort, colors it with the hues and tints of every kind of strangeness.  You were shocked by what you saw.  That’s normal.”

“I was not shocked.  You’re missing the point.  I mentioned this incident to give you some idea of what the tree told me.  It’s not the incident itself, it’s what it suggests.”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, no, no.  That’s not possible.  You, of all people, should know that.”

“I see.  I won’t play this game.  I am not your father, nor the persona who speaks to you from that tree.  I don’t know what you’re saying I know.  I have no inside knowledge of the kind you seem to be suggesting I have.  Tell me about the tree.  Between the two of us, we can figure out what this tree represents and how it is connected to your daughter.”

“My daughter?  You haven’t been listening.”

“But this story you just told about the birth of the foal, it was to illustrate something the tree had told you, remember?”

“I remember; the point is, do you?”

“Yes, of course.  But don’t you see, your daughter was present.  She and this tree are connected in some way.  The mare gave birth, you had this experience, and your daughter was present.  The two of you are connected through the story to this tree.  Remember what I have told you many times now.  The mind doesn’t fuse things like this together for no reason.  They are connected in some way, and once we understand how, you will or at least you should be able to renew your relations with your daughter.”

“No.  No.  You’ve got it all wrong.  Now don’t push on me an interpretation I know to be mistaken.  This is a complicated business and I’ve thought about it for quite some time.  I know, professionally, you have a technique for interpreting these kinds of crazy things.”

“They’re not crazy.  You’re not crazy.  No one has suggested you are.”

“Drop the word, then.”

“But it’s precisely through this unpremeditated use of words that we can come at what you are repressing.  Remember how you explained your daughter’s coldness?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I said she had a scarlet indifference to my loneliness after her mother died.”

“And that her coldness wounded you like a hot poker.”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s examine these words a bit.  Don’t they seem paradoxical to you?  You describe her coldness as scarlet and hot—words that describe the opposite of coldness.”

“They’re just fanciful expressions.”

“Nonsense.  They’re meaningful—but not on the level of conscious thought.”

“Of course, that’s what I meant by your technique.  We drift into irrelevancies.”

“On the other hand, these terms might apply to the tree.  The tree does turn colors in the fall.  How did you put it a little while ago?  The tree ‘musters the gay assizes’?  What does that word mean?”

“You tell me.”

“The word ‘assizes’ means a judgement, a verdict, a court decision.”

“I don’t see the relevance.”

“You are associating the tree with your daughter and with a judgement you imagine she has made regarding you—probably a condemnation.  The terms you use to describe the tree and your daughter are almost identical.  Now, you tell me that there is nothing outwardly responsible for this judgement, nothing you can discover by reviewing your history with her.  Therefore, this judgement is one you have made on yourself and is, perhaps, the very thing that has caused her coldness and that causes you to hold your hat in your hand and cry.  You have attributed this judgement to her, that at least is clear.  It’s likely that this is the very thing getting in the way of your relations with her.”

“What you’re saying is, I imagine her coldness!  I imagine it because I have made this judgement about myself.  For some reason I can’t make myself remember, I don’t deserve her affection, so I project coldness where there isn’t any—as a consequence of this judgement.”

“This isn’t exactly what I said.  But what do you think?  Does it seem likely to you?”

“It seems absurd.  I can’t say strongly enough what I feel about that.  It’s absurd!”

“You say that with such heat!  The heat makes me suspicious.”

“Listen, my daughter changed her phone number, then her email address, then moved to a new location which I learned of only when my letters were returned.  I’ve told you this.  Don’t you listen?  The tree has nothing to do with her.  I have been, over a period of years, slowly destroyed by this tree.  Every summer this A. Saccharinum makes at least one pronouncement I cannot forget.  These have become a great weight on me, so that I stand bent, not by age but by knowledge.  Why not end it, I have often thought, if it’s so bad!  Listen to me!  If I shrink at children because of what this A. Saccharinum has told me, I quail at the idea of death.  The time will come when I must die.  You cannot imagine with what dread I contemplate it. Oh, we think Nature is good, existence itself is, because it is all there is, is and must be, inherently good.  When we die, we return to Nature, to what the emotionally infantile call the Great Mother, in whose bosom we rest.  Nonsense!  Now that is a delusion worth analyzing.  The old days had it more nearly right in the notion of a fallen nature and a transcendent God, a wrathful deity, apart from nature.  Only ‘wrath’ is the wrong word.  There is no right word.  And there is no deity.  The idea is good as a counterweight to all such Nature nonsense.  What this tree has told me I can never share with you.  But I cannot forget it.  The knowledge crushes me.  If I told you what I cannot forget, you would not be able to live with the knowledge, believe me, and where would you be then?”

“But it’s natural to feel all these things you have just expressed.  You shouldn’t interpret dread of death as some kind of metaphysical revelation.  You know that, I shouldn’t have to tell you.  A man like you.”

“You interpret everything I say instead of listening to me, chopping and lopping it to fit your analytic scheme, so that what comes to you comes stamped with your own face on it.  How can you help but to not understand?  I don’t blame you.  I have been for years in the grip of the profoundest mystery.  I have shared the fact with no one until now.  I wasn’t sure I would open up even to you, though I managed it today.  I feel a certain relief.”

“Truth is essentially an art of interpretation.”

“But the criterion of truth is for you a certain psychological utility, ‘What does it lead to?’  The naiveté is to take an anthropocentric idiosyncrasy as the measure of things.  The tree is a mystery, and reality is a multiplicity of mysteries, all self-inconsistent, contradictory, changeable, and non-purposive.”

“It, reality as you describe it, reflects the confusions in your own mind brought on by whatever trauma you are repressing, probably the death of your wife, the one subject you have avoided successfully so far.  We haven’t talked about her at all.  We will have to leave her for your next visit.  For now, I want to know more about this A. Saccharinum.  Tell me more about the tree.”

“We don’t know how wrong we are about everything.  Everything!  All that we think, and thinking itself, how our thinking has steadily detached us from all the truths about ourselves and the world we used to know.  But why go on like this?  I can’t and won’t tell you.  For your sake.  That, ultimately, is the relief I need.  To say that.  To say that to someone who will listen.  You are the most familiar of all things to yourself.  Therefore, when you look in the mirror, you do not, and cannot, know what you really see.  The incomprehensible strangeness of it.  Oh, this is a blessing.  I wouldn’t change it.  For your sake.  I, however, carry the burden of what you really see.  I am not happy about it.  I will never be happy again.  Of all people, I alone know the truth.  Oh, there are secrets.  I know truths about animals.  About plants.  About minerals.  About gases.  About souls.  Time.  The past and the future.  About the moon and the planets.  Love and hate.  War.  God.  The things that A. Saccharinum has told me.  The things it knows.  They are not human things.  I whispered once a little tiny truth to my daughter, a truth that involved her.  She blanched and hasn’t spoken to me since.  I fear I may have spoiled her life.  That was a tiny truth.”

“Let me end this session by giving you something to think about till our next.  When we are children, it is natural for us to regard adults as wise and all-knowing, as possessors of the esoteric knowledge that will answer to all our sense of wonder and mystery about the world.  We attribute possession of such knowledge especially to our fathers.  This natural circumstance of childhood helps to explain why the tree speaks in your father’s voice and why it’s pronouncements seem to you like revelations of the mysteries.  I think it might unburden you a little if you allow yourself to recall these simple facts when you begin to feel particularly oppressed.   Somehow, your wife figures in all this.  Your wife and your mother.  Some trauma in childhood has evidently become connected to your wife and the circumstances of her death.  Her death is the most intensely repressed mental content we have so far encountered and is likely, therefore, to be bound up with all these things.  There’s a lot to do yet.  Well, here’s a prescription for a mild tranquilizer.  Take it only when you feel you need it.  We made progress today.  A lot has come out that will help us in our next session.  I expect it will go even better then.  Goodbye for now.”