Audio Book Sample
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
1st. There was nothing. Then. There was everything Then in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages. A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine, it sparked, presses hard against her back, as hard as life. It's needles sent the air, and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tuned down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things in words. Before words. It says sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering. It says a good answer must be reinvented many times from scratch. It says every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find a thing can travel everywhere just by holding still. The woman does exactly. That signals rain down around her like seeds. Talk runs far a field tonight. The bins in the alders speak of long ago disasters, spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen. Soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars, repeat the winds, gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes, and Rohan's, their blood red clusters. Ancient oaks wave prophecies of future weather. The several 100 kinds of hawthorne laugh at the single name they're forced to share laurels insists that even death is nothing to lose sleep over something in the air, sent commands. The woman close your eyes and think of willow! The weeping, you see will be wrong. Picture and acacia thorn, nothing in your thought will be sharp enough. What? Hovers right above you. What floats over your head right now. Now, trees even farther away join in all the ways you imagine us. Bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmegs, inverted spade, gnarled baja, elephant trunks, the straight up missile of us all are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole, you missed the half of it and more. There's always as much below ground as above. That's the trouble with people. Their root problem. Life runs alongside them unseen, right here, right next, creating the soil, cycling water, trading in nutrients, making weather, building, atmosphere, feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count. A chorus of living. Would sings to the woman if your mind were only a slightly greener thing, We drown you in meaning. The pine she leans against, says, listen, there's something you need to hear.