"Sacred" Tree - by Charles DeBenedetto

 

It was a massacre.

Incessant din of chainsaw chomps.

Every day I thought, surely, I was next to

fall.

You built a fence around me

from the flesh of my brothers.

You call me "sacred."

It's supposed to mean "holy"

but that's a lie.

"Sacred" means

"We're sorry we killed your family."

Or, more accurately

"We feel bad that we killed your family

and we want to feel better."

Or, maybe to you, "sacred" means 

"For some reason, you make us feel, and

now we simply cannot kill you."

Fools.

Even the smallest sapling

could be "sacred" one day if you 

left it alone.

But we need to be half as old as Christ

and half as high as heaven

before you realize that

we deserve to live for our own sake.

Not die for yours.

Photo: 1,000 year-old tree in the Alishan National Forest of Chiayi County, Taiwan. Many trees like this one were cut down during the Japanese colonial era (1895 - 1945). The giant torii gate at Tokyo's Meiji Shrine, for example, is made of trees from Alishan.

Photo Credit: Author

Limestone Jubilee: The Queen’s Head Rock - 女王頭

by Charles DeBenedetto

The entrance to Yeh Liu Geo Park. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

Driving past Taipei and under the shadow of skyscrapers, we quickly transition from highway, to provincial road, to side road, to “is this a road?” Along the way, there are beach resorts, paraglider rentals, and plenty of seafood restaurants. Eventually, we find a sign pointing to what we are looking for, “Yeh Liu Geo Park.”

 

Parking our car and buying a ticket, we’re surprised by how many people are here, and how many foreign languages are being spoken, despite the pandemic. We are reminded that Taiwan has a large and eclectic foreign community. We look through all of the different language brochures until we find English (a testament to the popularity of this place), and I read the title:

 

Welcome to Yeh Liu Geo Park! The closest place on Earth that you can get to the surface of Mars.

 

I laugh at that, but, looking at the pictures in the brochure, I get their point. We walk down a large, sand-colored stone path, flanked by trees on either side which graciously provide us with shade from the mighty Sun. About fifteen minutes of walking in shade abruptly ends when we reach a bridge. It connects Taiwan to the Geo Park, which is situated on two separate stone peninsulas that slowly descend into the Pacific.

 

As we walk among the peculiar rocks, we notice an employee with a large straw hat and sleek sunglasses standing beyond a red painted line that divides the park roughly in half. As we watch him, we realize that he is essentially The Catcher in the Rye. His job is to make sure nobody crosses the red line over to the side by the ocean which is considered too dangerous. We talk with him, projecting our voices a bit from the safe side of the line, and his face lights up as he talks about the rocks.

 

“Oh, yeah!” he says happily, and he begins pointing his fingers as he talks. “So you just walked through the Mushroom Field. Over there is Ice Cream, and down that way are the Candles.” I’m sure he has said this to tourists every day for a long time, so I appreciate the enthusiasm with which he says it.

 

Very Big Mushrooms. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

We look back at the Mushroom Field. The bottom halves are lighter stones that have been heavily eroded by the tide, while the top halves, darker and crannied as if shot by many rounds of bullets, appear to be ocean rocks or coral that were pushed up a long time ago. I cannot get my imagination to see the Ice Cream, but the Candles are beautiful divots with round stones inside, supposedly placed naturally, to make the wicks. We walk on top of the red line, but never cross it, and look back at the man every now and again to see if he cares or if he will say anything.

Candles might work if you don’t have a lighthouse. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

We see many other special rocks made by countless years of wind and erosion, with names like Elephant, Snake, Dragon, and, my favorite, Flip Flop. Finally, we see what we have been looking for.

 

She has a long, slim neck, a small indent of a mouth, a little nose, and a large, pointed crown. She looks fearless, as if she knew who Medusa was and still dared to look her in the eye anyway. She is the Queen’s Head, a symbol of Taiwan, right alongside Taipei 101 and bubble milk tea.

 

Her Majesty. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

A line of people is waiting to take a picture with her, and when it is our turn, we run up next to her, quickly put our umbrellas down and squint our eyes in the Sun until the picture is taken. Moving out of the way so that other people can take a picture, I turn back to her for another look.

 

Her neck is almost cartoonishly skinny, balancing her giant head. Later I would learn that she has been losing about a centimeter of her neck every year due to erosion, and that she probably has about ten years left before she falls. Discussing this with my family later on, we decided that perhaps a veil could be made to go over her head and down to the ground, made of strong metal to give her extra support.

 

Perhaps, but then she would lose some of the magic, that she is a work of art made solely by Mother Nature herself.

 

Artificially propping her up would feel inauthentic, but it would also follow a human pattern of first hurting Mother Nature’s creations, only to then become the stewards of those creations’ continued survival.

 

We are hurting her, and accelerating her decapitation. Not only because we are careless tourists, who cannot resist the urge to touch her and put our arm around her, but also because the typhoons she must endure every summer are becoming more intense because of human-induced climate change.

 

If she is to survive beyond 2030, then, humans must intervene to save her, after nearly killing her. Is there a difference then between the Queen’s Head and polar bears?

 

But even without humans, the Queen’s Head would indeed fall one day. After thousands of years of working on her, Mother Nature was always going to destroy her eventually.

 

She is impermanent, just like me, but in that moment our two impermanents met.

 

* * *

 

As a New Hampshirite, seeing the Queen inevitably reminds me of the Old Man of the Mountain, the rock formation which used to be perched at the top of Cannon Mountain in northern New Hampshire, before it fell in May 2003. A couple hundred years before that, US senator Daniel Webster said of the Old Man:

 

Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe, jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth. But up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

 

It is truly an epic quote, although I do realize that the use of "men" is outdated. But to me, the quote means that strong, diligent, and independent people, men and women, come from New Hampshire, and I feel proud to be a part of that tradition.

But now, we must ponder its antithesis.

 

Now that the Old Man has fallen, are there no more strong people in New Hampshire?

The Old Man before the Fall. Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

 

* * *

 

There was mourning when the Old Man fell, and some talked of artificially putting him back up there, but finally it was decided to do nothing. The people of New Hampshire are steadfast and independent, as Daniel Webster observed long ago. We don’t need a rock on a mountain to prove it.

 

What, then, does the Queen’s Head mean for Taiwan? Perhaps it is the Old Man’s opposite; New Hampshire’s strength and resolve complimented by Taiwan’s beauty and grace.

 

Or maybe it is Mother Nature’s signature, after having finished her masterpiece that is not only Taiwan, but all of our wondrous Earth.

 

Or maybe it’s just a rock, and it is silly to spend so much mental effort trying to project meaning onto her.

 

In truth, I don't know what the Queen’s Head means, but, like the Old Man to New Hampshirites, I do know that the Taiwanese do not need her message.

 

She will fall when it is her time, as all things do. But until then, we will admire her beauty, and after she falls, we will remember her.

 

The Queen will be dead one day, but she will live long in our collective memory.

 

And maybe, though our lives are too short to comprehend this, Mother Nature is just creating a fresh canvas on which to make another masterpiece.

 

A sign that will almost certainly outlive its subject. Photo Credit: K.H.

The Lennon Wall: We Need More Than Love – 藍儂牆

by Charles DeBenedetto

The Vltava River in Prague, Summer 2019. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

Our knuckles turn white as we awkwardly grip our luggage and descend the stairs into the dark subway station. We look around to try and understand our surroundings, and I fear that we look like innocent tourists just waiting to be taken advantage of.

 

We see a sign that says CHANGE and we roll our luggage toward it. My girlfriend says that she’ll wait with the luggage while I change some Euros for Czech korunas. I walk inside the small, lonely store.

 

It says 0% commission, and I think that is probably a good thing, even though I only have a vague idea of what commission means. There is a list of currency exchange rates, and at the top, I see that the exchange rate of Czech korunas to Euros looks about right, and I prepare a one-hundred Euro bill.

 

“I’d like to exchange one-hundred Euros,” I say meekly.

 

The man behind the counter is young, perhaps a few years older than me, with short red hair, pale blue eyes, and a long nose. He prepares a receipt for me to sign. I begin signing my first name, then I look up to read what I am actually signing. I see that there is a section that says I have three hours to cancel the transaction if I wish, and, feeling relief, I finish signing my name.

 

The man puts my one-hundred Euro bill through a machine to verify it, and holds it up to the light as well, as if he believes that I might be trying to scam him. He then slips three Czech bills under the glass: a 1,000, a 500, and a 100.

 

I thank him quietly, carefully place the three bills into my wallet, and scurry out of there.

Back with my girlfriend, we look at my receipt and see that the exchange rate was one Euro = sixteen Czech korunas, much lower than it should be. I was scammed.

 

I turn back to look at his store. At the top of the exchange rate list, the rate from Czech korunas to Euros is in large print, and perfectly normal. At the very bottom of the list, in small print, the exchange rate from Euros to Czech korunas is terrible.

 

“This place…no good,” an older man says, with hazelnut eyes and short, curly gray hair. “I can show you…better place.”

 

I’m nervous, and I don’t want to be talking with this man. But I remember that I can still cancel my transaction, so I rush back inside the CHANGE shop.

 

“I want to cancel my exchange.”

 

“Why?” he says, clearly agitated.

 

“It says on my receipt that I can cancel within three hours.”

 

“I know what it says!” he snaps. “Why do you want to change?”

Because you are a fraud and take advantage of people for a living! I wish I were brave enough to say.

 

“Because I want my one-hundred Euros back," I actually say.

 

“But why?!” he yells angrily.

He’s breaking the script. Service workers are not supposed to yell at customers. I’m even more nervous now. I imagine him coming out from his glass box and hurting me, or calling some henchmen to come up from behind me and hurt me. I have lost some money, but it’s not too bad, so I decide to give up.

 

“It’s okay,” I try to say calmly. “Thank you.”

 

Back outside, the old man is still there. “How much…did you…exchange?” he asks. Why is he still here? Wasn’t he just passing by on his way to catching a subway train?

 

“Not much, it’s okay.”

 

“Can I see…your wallet? I can…help you.”

 

My girlfriend nudges me and says “zou ba,” Mandarin for “let’s go,” so the man cannot understand.

 

“We’ll be alright, thanks though,” I say, and we fast-walk away without looking back. Minutes later, we see the old man approaching other people, and we realize that even the old man is a fraud, even though he was right when he said that the CHANGE store was no good.

 

My mind feels muddy as we finally walk into the subway’s ticket area, where we quickly learn that we need coins to buy a ticket, and we only have bills. “Do you need coins?” someone says, “Maybe I can help?” But we’ve had enough of talking to strangers, so we go to a store and buy a pastry, then use the change to buy two subway tickets.

 

After a difficult time wandering around trying to find our hotel, when we are finally relaxing, I do some math and learn that I lost about one-thousand Czech korunas, which is about forty US dollars. That sucks, but we can manage. I am grateful that I did not lose more than that, and I know that, for the price of forty US dollars, I learned a valuable lesson. I was too innocent, too quick to trust others, and too quick to act.

 

Perhaps that man needs the money to live, I tell myself to try and feel better. No matter, I vow that I will not be fooled again, that I will be more careful, savvier.

 

The rest of the evening is pleasant, but I feel sorry for Prague, because my first impression of this ancient city will always be the time when scammers flocked to me like vultures to a cadaver.

* * *

 

After a first day like that, I never imagined our second day to be defined by a profound love for humanity. Or maybe our first day helped to heighten our next day's experience.

* * *

Walking the crowded cobblestone streets in the baking sun the next day, and feeling pretty pessimistic about our species, I use one hand to make a visor for an invisible hat, and the other to hold her hand. We move like subway trains, picking up speed only to stop abruptly as something grabs her attention. I walk a few more paces beyond her before realizing that I ignorantly passed by something interesting.

The Lennon Wall. Photo Credit: K.H.

 

It’s graffiti, but unlike any other we had seen in Prague, or Europe for that matter. It is a group project of hundreds, perhaps thousands of artists. Many have written messages like “all you need is love,” “no room for hate,” and similar feel good declarations. In the middle of the wall, there is a black and white portrait of John Lennon’s face, the way he looked after he left his boy band years behind. A young man is playing Beatles songs on his guitar directly under him, as if he is being watched over by his teacher.

 

Later, I will learn that this wall has endless layers, and it symbolizes a deep, collective pain and love. It began with one person spray-painting an image of John’s face in an act of mourning his recent death, but later people began using the wall at night to write anti-communist sentiments (the only way to speak freely in then-communist Czechoslovakia). It was an anonymous chat room in the pre-internet social network.

 

But today, the wall’s message goes far beyond the Czech Republic, or even Europe. Today I see many Chinese characters on the wall, like “Support Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong, Keep Fighting!” I wonder if the Czech people feel for Hong Kong with a special intensity, because they know intimately what it is like to be suppressed by a communist regime.

 

While I am admiring the wall, some Chinese tourists are beside me, and they are also reading the Chinese characters. They mutter things to each other in Mandarin, like “disrespectful,” “absolutely terrible,” and my favorite, “everyone knows that China is trying to help Hong Kong, and those violent protesters are completely out of line!”

 

No, not everybody knows that. But you do. It is true for you, as it might be true for many more in China. And if these Chinese tourists can serve as a litmus test for China as a whole, then I can only imagine what they think about the Taiwanese, who are often described in Chinese media as “separatist terrorists” when in actuality they have been peacefully living in a country that has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party and never should be.

 

* * *

 

John Lennon is looking down at me, and the man is singing “All You Need Is Love.”

 

Love is great, perhaps the greatest thing about humanity, but in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, they need more than love. This wall is beautiful, and it is covered in warmth and heartfelt prayers from people all over the world, who come here as though on a pilgrimage for a religious faith deeper and older than any scripture. But this wall will not change the oppressive systems in place.

 

I don’t believe that the leaders of Czechoslovakia’s communist government saw the wall and wept, declaring “We were wrong! We must democratize!” Instead, they just painted the wall over with white paint.

 

The same is true for China. This wall will not change them. Neither will your FaceBook post. Only long-term, conscious, careful pressure from all sides can work, forcing them to see that the world will not accept them unless they fundamentally change.

 

But isn’t my story just another layer of graffiti on the wall? Just a glorified FaceBook post?

 

And yet, the wall gives me hope. It shows me that for many of us, our hearts are aligned, even if we are too afraid, too busy, or too unguided to act.

 

* * *

 

When the communists in Czechoslovakia saw the graffiti on the wall, they painted it white. But the people just graffitied it again. And the Party painted it white again. Over and over until eventually, most likely due to other, larger forces at work, communism in Czechoslovakia fell and democracy prevailed. And now, the wall is never painted white again. It just gets painted over with more graffiti, more outbursts of passionate love for Hong Kong and our fellow humans and the world – love begets love – infinitely, as long as we are brave and vulnerable enough to express it.

 

The Lennon Wall is the Truth was a capital T that always prevails in the end. You can paint it white all you want, but it will always come back more beautiful than before.

 

We stare at the wall for a long time until we finally bring ourselves to look away.

A Close-up Image of the Wall. Photo Credit: K.H.