"You will not live forever..."

As I contemplated what was on my heart, and of course tying it in to the literature of class, ...well I was drawing a blank.

I didn't feel as a passage from Joel was the ticket, so I started exploring the events of class yesterday.

We each took the book of Joel and wandered to different spots on campus, proclaiming to nature the passages that we felt a desire to share.  I think a lot of us, if not all of us, were new to this sort of experience, and so a spirit of uncertainty followed.

But I tried, anyways, and found myself slipping into it.  I informed the fields and burdened the Spanish moss with news of despair, but one memory fascinated me more than the others.

One of the rules of the blogging project is to tie the blog into a piece of the literature or dialogue from class.  My "tie" is to dialogue...between me and a tree.

Behind Valencia Hall, I had found this rather sagging tree, its limbs drooping downward in their old age and its leaves, none too enthusiastic, simply hanging there.  Holding up the branches holding up the leaves was all this poor, aged tree could manage anymore.

Its bark is almost an ashy-white, the figurative hairs on its head, possibly.  I don't know what possessed me to do so (perhaps the role we had been asked to play), but I drew close to its trunk, read a dismal passage from Joel, and then whispered without a hint of emotion or care, "You will not live forever."

I wanted the tree to know that it would die, eventually.  I condemned it to death by pointing out its numbered years left in life.

I jokingly told someone about it when we got back to class, but I almost feel...I almost feel like I owe that tree an apology.

Strange, isn't it?...