The Sound of Trees

The Hispanics threw a big party at Lancaster event center a month ago. I wore the Friar's Brew t-shirt to the party and the people there loved it. I explained that my late ex-girlfriend had bought it for me and I now keep it as something to remember her by. It read "Friar's Brew / St. Mary of the Angels" and it had a small stylised figure of a very fat friar above the words, much wider than he is tall. According to Tina, this little friar "looks like he makes a sound", and she would make a sound like a rubber sheet stretching.

Everything makes a sound in Tina's universe. One day we had to walk down Jubilee Road, which was lined with some trees, and Tina told me that each of these trees made a sound. The sounds were similar to the the wordless babblings of very young children. If a tree had drooping foliage, it made a sound of a bummed-out youngster; if it had lively, upwards-pointing leaves, then the sound was gleeful; if it leant, it was a sound of the child falling asleep in his mother's bosom. In this way she called each tree along Jubilee Road by its name.

At the heart of this person who fill the very rational roles of girlfriend, daughter, sister, or teacher to those around her, lies a universe where everything has a name and a life of its own.