cerocuatro

“Crown shyness,” they call the botanical phenomenon that keeps the crowns of trees from colliding with one another. It’s what allows them to stand symmetrically close, yet never touching. Close enough to shape a landscape, a dappled path where sunlight and rain slip through. And yet far enough apart to avoid meddling in each other’s affairs. A perfect distance: cold, calculated.

Perhaps that shyness among trees is possible because they know nothing of desire, of second intentions, of looking straight into someone’s eyes while they speak and losing focus because you start thinking about how beautiful they look. Perhaps shyness is a good strategy, a way to keep the closeness of another from breaking into our space. We know the messes that arise when there are two.

Trees don’t know about the atomic energy that sparks when hands brush together by accident, and for a moment all logic of space and time vanishes. They never touch. Oh, but they do form landscapes.

In my experience, it’s not advisable to follow the behavior of trees. It’s true that keeping distance keeps life neat, less mysterious. But shyness has never given birth to great stories."