Catching Rain: Kuplet

People are like blades of grass. Growing next to each other and competing for limited resources. Nutrition in the form of water, the sun, clean air, etc., all divided unequally, yet all desired equally. Nature finds a way to keep as many blades alive, as resources are abound.

In the forest, a large patch of grass has billions of individual blades feeding on the same stock of nutrients. When certain individuals reach ripe adulthood and tower over others in height, they block part of the sun from feeding other, shorter blades. The large blade of grass also requires more water for survival, and therefore will soak-up more for itself, and leave less for the smaller one next to it. After a while, weaker blades, ones who haven’t been given a fair chance to survive, will start the process of dying out. For a given amount of resources, only a specific amount of individuals may survive. Nature has a built-in mechanism for controlling the population of her offspring.

We, as humans, have grown to such a colossal extent that we are firmly entrenched in the loop of self-extermination. There isn’t enough food to feed all of us, and yet we each have an equal right to live. War, hunger, artificial foods, disease, and all the like are our own ways of controlling our numbers. What makes us different from these blades of grass in accepting our fate with a depressed smile? Each individual, so vibrantly unique and beautiful. Yet our society, a collection of self-imposed limits and monotony.

Why isn’t there an up-roar, a special conference attended by representatives of our entire population to figure out how we can control our numbers, or how we can increase our base of natural resources? What lies beyond the boundaries of our planet? With all of our greater intelligence geared towards marketing and accepting the belief that we must fight each other to survive, that we are, as a whole, no different from blades of grass. What is the purpose of such higher intelligence, if it isn’t channeled towards ways in which we can help each other to flourish?

Explained within the Torah, we find Man in the Garden of Eden, tilling the ground, living amongst the trees. Of those with names, in the midst of the garden we have the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Homey G-to-the-D goes on to tell Man that he may freely eat of any tree, except of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For on that day, Man shall surely die.

First off, what does it mean to eat of a tree? We have references to fruit, so is it literally just picking fruit off a tree and eating it? It could be, but nobody truly knows if the Torah is a literal or metaphorical text. For that very reason, since we can not reasonably take for granted either, without stepping all over each other’s ideas and concepts, we won’t. Someone’s beliefs are just that, their beliefs. The vocabulary clearly exposes themselves at the center of their beliefs, and for that very reason, we choose no sides on this argument. We agree with all sides of the literal and metaphorical debate, as we all live together, as one energy with the Universe. So what does it then mean to eat fruit of the tree?

Eating, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, is to consume, to gain, to ingest, to bring something into you. Therefore, eating the fruit of the tree, is to acquire something that the tree has to offer. And now we have the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What does it have to offer? How will consuming its offering, or learning of its ways, bring death to Man?

This tree contains the Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore eating of its fruit is truly acquiring this Knowledge of Good and Evil for yourself. Knowledge generally comes from experiencing, or learning about, things or events. Therefore, a Knowledgeable person about a certain thing can utilize that thing to a better degree than his counterpart who is not yet as Knowledgeable. Here we follow that if Man is equipped, or skilled, in the ways of Good and Evil, his demise will be at hand.

If an entity contains both Good and Evil, he is neither one nor the other, but simultaneously both. ...

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Looking out into the field, noticing a tree standing among many, thoughts drift towards the famous question: If a tree in the middle of a forest falls, does it make a sound? After much deliberation over the years, a solution to the problem has evolved. If one knows that the tree exists and that it falls, then one doesn’t need to necessarily be within ear shot distance of it to know that it made a sound. However, if one doesn’t know that the tree exists, then it didn’t make a sound.

If we stand next to the tree, and it falls, we all know that there is a definite sound. If we are told that someone is standing next to the tree, then we agree that they hear the sound of the falling tree even though we are not present to witness them hearing the sound. So we know that if someone is present, there will always be a sound. What if no one is present to hear the sound of the falling tree? It still makes the same sound, we just don’t hear it, but we know the properties of the tree interacting with the ground. If we don’t know that the tree exists, let alone that it has fallen, then a sound was not made. If someone was robbed, and you never found out, then in the world you live in, that person was never robbed. He has only been robbed once that knowledge has been shared with you. If we are talking about a tree, then we have already declared the existence of the tree, and hence it must make a sound. A more suitable statement proceeds that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and no one knows that it has fallen, then a sound was not made.

Looking back out onto the field at the nearby tree firmly rooted into the ground with its brown, crackly, thick bark leading up to extensions, branches which lead to more, each thinner than the previous. The thinnest branches bend and sway in the wind, moving the leaves back and forth. Is the wind causing the leaves to move, or is the tree moving its hands and thereby causing the wind? Fanning the air and carrying the tree’s scent, nature’s scent, in my direction, in all directions.