After this my Lungs'll be so fucked up!

In English class this past year, David Chernin posed the question to me, asking about poetry, of "Why can't a tree just be a goddam tree?" And I never had a viable reason why a tree just couldn't be a tree. It seemed possible since, y'know, a tree itself is great what with its cycles and its leaves and its life and its trunk and the trauma of the chainsaw; however, I finally have the reason why a tree isn't just a tree to poets.

I don't like the term poet, as an aside, it sounds too coffee-house cliche. But whatever. I have no choice. So, poets often deal in terms of those ineffable things in life--those things which cannot be described, cannot be made known by any language, except the language of imagery. A poet may see a tree in Winter and see the accumulation of his life: dead-for-now, threadbare, and either surrounded by dead grass or snow or mud or what you will. Any person can see these things in life, any person can think in similes.

Any person can think on a higher level, can understand themselves better, all they have to do is look out their goddam window. And that's why a tree isn't just a tree, David.

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A Tangent: Go see An Inconvenient Truth. It's not as leftist, crazy, as you'd think it'd be...

Or boring, what with Al Gore being the lead and all. I absolutely loved it.
Go See it at the AMC Ontario Mills. It's playing there. But not the Victoria Gardens... It's under the little "AMC Select." Definitely worth watching. It even has some sweet previews.

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Love,
Evan