Wanting to save that tree is as naive as wanting to stop the shipwrecks of immigrants.
Any gesture that implies a strong change of dynamics is a gesture with a great load of naivety.
It is the strength of that naivety that is the only thing that can achieve those changes.
I perhaps learned that from César, the one from Las Palmas square. Manrique.
I have just spent a few days there in Las Palmas (the city), at the house of a friend, a tree expert, Tanausu, in the Risco de San Nicolás, a fishing and seafaring neighborhood, where there is a beautiful and small hermitage, that of San Nicolás, and of course with its tree and of course they want to get rid of it. Now.
They say that because it is old it is dangerous. The neighbors say that they have to demonstrate that clearly and contrastingly. But we already know that when someone with "executive power" gets an idea stuck in their head and tells it publicly, it is very difficult for them to back down.
There are the neighbors demonstrating and asking for clemency, in this case to the female politician who is behind cutting it down, who is from Podemos. The matter is not about parties. The two trees are right on the border between the wealthy and the poor.
And when they tell me, I get that chill that I already know, and I ask myself: why did I write the article asking for mercy for the casuarina and why, when I arrive in Las Palmas, do I find myself in a similar situation, because my attention goes there to those trees? There are so many things. That seems very strange.
Today, suddenly, the idea comes to me like a bucket of cold water, and I take Google Earth and look at it. Ufff the distance from the house of the friend where they give me shelter and hospitality in the Risco de San Nicolás, to the tree of its hermitage is 333 meters. And I go and look at the one from the house where I grew up and I measure, and the distance between my house and the casuarina is 333 meters.
Curious number and curious and naive references to which it points.
I never knew why they called lost, dragged or defeated people Christ, but without breaking, savagely poor or different. That is a Christ, it is said as contempt, as get him away from you.
A Christ is a savage poor man at the door of the church.
The one who passes by him indifferent or dropping alms. That is a believer.
That is the problem of the casuarina. It is not a tree of ancestry, or renown, or haughtily native; it is a Christ of a tree there in front of the church and, as Christ, it has all the chances for the chainsaw to unfold, in words and in action.
They should leave those two trees in peace, let them die of life. We have solutions of all kinds to do it. Without diminishing the safety of people or interrupting the rehabilitation of the square.
Okay, it's just a tree Christ, two Christs. What better reason.
I am only transmitting the message, it is what I have always done. When they took La Geria away with shovels it was just rofe, the sea with trammels was just fish or beauty to the garbage was just landscape. Everything is always "just that". Even you and I are only "just that".
That is why we must defend the Christ that is in everything.
Hopefully they will let them die of their own life.
And when I wrote that if they cut it down they would not see me again, I was not referring to the fact that I would not return to Arrecife. I never left.
One last thing, if they cut it down, let those responsible cut it down, with the same paraphernalia that they take in the inaugurations, like that with the chainsaw and secretly fighting each one for their little while and their photos.
Because when they inaugurate the square it will not be the workers who do it, I say.
So, San Ginés, San Nicolás. I hope they leave their street Christs in peace and life.
And I do not pray for them because I am not a believer.
And yes, I should have expressed these things a long time ago, when the process was less advanced, which has already taken its time, I know now.
Thus, rationally, I should be attentive to other things and I am ashamed to do this.
But since everything is not rational, and everything is not that shame dominates you, well, I leave it there.
If everything were rational, neither the church, nor the square, nor the tree would exist.
And surely political life would be very different. That of everyone, not just that of politicians.
For those who venture into the worlds of unreason, I leave this about 333. Since we are talking about Churches, saints and Christs.
What does "333" symbolize in numerology?
Regarding the biblical meaning of 333, it represents the Holy Trinity and the three areas that would make it up: the mind, the body, and the spirit. Also, in the Bible the number 3 is considered a perfect number, since it is found in several passages and references.
As for trees, the other one, the third one, I already said, is there in Alegranza.
A whole mystery of desolation. I know it. The desolation.
Ahh I would be deeply grateful if they did not do it, and not just me.
Happy holidays.
