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My Hungarian Pine

 

On February 17, 2021, the Hungarian black pine in my neighbor's garden was felled. This pine, which alone embodied the memory of my many trips to Italy, this pine that I contemplated every day, in which I could merge, would be no more. 

 

It's frightening to see how quickly a tree, which for 60 years grew towards the sky to reach its size and 'majesty', can be put down.

The beauty of a tree is not just what you see, but what exists beyond it. At the end of the day, a few branches and two pieces of trunk lie in my living room. From the outside, my Hungarian pine has come inside. Now it's time to pay homage and try to preserve a trace of its greatness.

 

"The more sensitive a contemplator's soul, the more he surrenders to the ecstasies aroused in him by this chord. A sweet and profound reverie then seizes his senses, and he loses himself with a delicious intoxication in the immensity of this beautiful system with which he feels identified. Then all particular objects escape him; he sees and feels nothing but the whole. Some particular circumstance must tighten his ideas and circumscribe his imagination so that he can observe in parts this universe he was striving to embrace." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, 7th walk, 1782.