Étude – A short, musical composition . . . often designed to demonstrate the skill of the player.
Trees are amazing things. They represent the tallest and oldest and largest, individual living thing on the planet.
And in case you didn’t know, the tallest, a Coast Redwood (just under 380 feet high); the largest, a Giant Sequoia (over 52,500 cubic feet excluding branches); and the oldest, a Bristlecone Pine (over 4,800 years old), are all in California.
Go figure. (Although I was born and bred in California, bragging about the state isn’t the topic here.)
I mention trees because I want to mention seeds. A seed is an incredible piece in the puzzle of life. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In spite of their many differences, every seed on the planet has something in common; that is, its ability to replicate its parent.
Think for a moment about a tree seed. At some relatively early point in its existence, it comes into proximity with dirt and water. Barring a disruption of some sort, (soilus interruptus?), that seed will begin to process the various components it finds within the dirt and water into wood. But not just that. A master plan — a musical arrangement, if you will — within the seed will organize and direct everything in a grand orchestration of tree-making, and at some point, a perfect, little tree will find itself poking up out of the ground. A truly amazing thing about all this is, that little thing is a complete tree; nothing needs adding. Granted, most would consider a two-inch tall tree as rather tiny, and I suppose it would be correctly called a sapling, but really, to the best of my knowledge, nothing besides mass will be added to such a tree throughout its (potentially) long life.
It doesn’t matter what side of the Evolution/Creation/Whatever? debate one cares to favor, the processes humanity has thus far discovered in life — micro, macro and everything betwixt — are simply amazing. (If a reader wishes to ascribe teleologic significance to any of that, well, that’s obviously the reader’s prerogative. Personally, I choose to stand quietly, answerless, mouth agape in gobsmacked wonder.)
I have no great point to make here. Human convention and survival demand broad and generalized perspectives as we tend to our daily activities, but as we place the blinders athwart our noggins and shove the wax plugs into our ear canals — metaphorically speaking — when we board the 7:10 for downtown, we shut out so very much of life around us. Yes, it is probably essential we do that . . . possibly inevitable . . . but maybe we should remind ourselves once in a while, recognize what we’re doing and force ourselves to pause a moment; hesitate for a few heartbeats.
Just long enough to listen to or gaze upon one of those sublime études that are playing all about.
