On Lotta Lotass' Redwood 1:5

“Trees, according to their type, correspond to the perception and cognition of the good and the true from which intelligence and wisdom derive. For that reason, the ancients, proficient in the knowledge of correspondences, performed their sacred rituals in groves. And thus trees so often replace Scripture, and the sky the church….”

Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell

Whatever you may be expecting when you click on the link that brings you to Lotta Lotass’ Redwood site, you must first step onto a digital doormat and swat your paw at a number. cclLICK. Is this an illusion of order, a table of contents in the syntax of biblical references, a list of prayers for the canonical hours, a stack of library cards, or a bowl of milk? And where are the missing links in Linnaean binomial taxonomy? From here on you are only a cclLICK away from a picture of the genus Sequoia, named after an indigenous tribe of the North American indians. Each postcard is a vivisection of a pre-Christian pith, a life lived among giant trees, and the people who felled, sawed and transported them. The latter are literally as small as Tom Thumbs or Nils Holgerssons next to the vast perimeters and heights reached in one, and only one, place in the world.

While the bark - Meoww meoww - of Lotass' work tells you that questions about the work in progress can be sent to the 'ordfabriken' [word factory], I am still waiting for a response: why Redwood? Is it a coincidence? A question of good or bad luck? Size, time, place? Why not a local species: a 'tall' [pine], an 'ek' [oak, spoke], a 'gran' [spruce], or a 'bok' [beech, book]?

“Tall stories grow naturally among the tall timber,” says Louis Untermeyer in his foreword to the Wonderful Adventures of Paul Bunyan (Heritage Press, 1945). Paul Bunyan is the legendary folktale of a lumberjack in the Northwest who was born in the days when the country itself was young, and forests were vast and dark, and men were few and lonely. Dwarfed by the trees, men had to make themselves big, if only by way of their imagination. Paul Bunyan is the immigrant pioneer dream, a symbol of youth, bigger than the trees. “The Best is never good enough, and even the Biggest lifts itself by its bootstraps to be bigger. 'That,' we say proudly - perhaps a little too proudly – 'that’s America for you!'"

Lotass' Redwood brings lonely immigrants back to reality, to the Old World revisited. And of course, there was so much more of the world back then, however unevenly distributed. When you went west, you promised not to be so “territorial” about the land you left behind, but I could read in your letters that you were frightened, that you too had been wounded. You couldn't let go of what you believed was your birth right. Eliza Doolittle's lines gradually became more and more evasive, like an actress who has rehearsed for hours on end for a role, without really understanding how the play really ends. Is that so?

Back home the Internet lynx is likely to close in - xu&rr xu&rr- and haunt you for want of more. And then a storm is sure to rise up in Littleland, and everything must be cut back down, sawed and sectioned for transport. No more giant branches or book shelves or tree rings to climb on, leap and swing from. And remember how we used to laugh at the cartoons. Little Orphan Annie and ‘gee whiskers’ and ‘leapin’ lizards, and ‘warbucks’ and you will be alone once again in the clear cut, among the stubs, the twigs, the slash and the scrub. The “America trunks” are long since gone, removed, transported, emptied. Abandoned by generations before you, though you are still hanging onto the handle. And you are ashamed to say so. Why is this so?

You would begin by collecting a thing, things, and then a structure in which you could contain things, like fear and loneliness and where did I come from and where am I going, and all the other things that are everywhere always so alike. Do you have enough of that thing now, that thing on this thing? Is there a nature reserve big enough to contain it? Don’t worry, it’s still somewhere around here, a protected species. So when are you coming home?

...tbc