Fever

Fever can often make you see or think about minutia with skewed perspective. Heated brainwaves shimmer across the cosmic borderline between what is real and what is only perceived, the brief transition from the normal to the supernatural compelling if not enticing. Case in point, without the aid of an elevated temperature, I might never have considered the plight of the pin oak outside my window in the ivy bed.

Although she stands dwarfed by the tall leggy pines surrounding her, obviously ill suited to her spot, she stands with stoic grace even in the discomfort of her oddity. Clinging tenaciously to her dry coppery leaves until new buds push them and warm spring winds sweep them away, the pin oak is so unlike the other trees she must be an easy target for criticism and rebuke. Embracing diversity is not an innate trait in nature. You won’t often see the required self-discipline in a group mentality such as that which the brethren of the pines enjoys.

Experienced in, and knowing precisely how the pin oak must feel, the lacking in commonality but staunch belief in her true value, I would gladly offer up mediation with the pines if I thought they had evolved. But pines are somewhat shallow rooted and can only see from their higher vantage point. Anything other than the sharp verdant needles they share and are familiar with must seem irrelevant and inconsequential to them.

Still in all, the pin oak doesn’t seem to mind being the short deciduous tramp amongst the evergreens, the odd one out, the one who does things differently in spite of disdainful looks and rushing whispers above her. Perhaps she has learned what the pines cannot in the staid comfort of the blind acceptance of their fixed albeit narrow standards.

It’s a pity actually. How can they see from their lofty heights that innovation was never born in status quo, never accomplished without risk of rejection and resistance? In their determination to disregard anything that challenges tradition as the paradigm, the pines seal themselves off from original thought, sighting anomaly as being anathema to convention.

All things considered, I’d have to choose to be a pin oak out of sync than a pine convinced of its own superiority.