“The poignancy of situations that evoke reflection lies in the fact that we really do not know the meaning of the tendencies that are pressing for action.”
JOHN DEWEY, “Human “Nature and Conduct”

We look, then look away, and think about what we have just seen. There’s always something going on behind our vision; something percolating, something redolent and waiting, anxious to express, yet hesitant and half lost. A soft translucent  shadow growing darker and hard-edged, taking shape as we move beneath the sun. Our subconscious minds attach much more to a tree than our conscious minds are able to perceive or retain. Our subliminal yearnings have must needs to express, yet are held back. But why? What do we really see, what can we see more completely when we pick up a pencil and draw a house in the woods? What does house mean to you? What are the the long stored memories, abstractions, and dreams of trees?* Of woods? Do we even know? Do we really want to see what’s there?

Are we willing to find out? It’s there! See it? Pick it up, go ahead. It’s only a pencil!

Go ahead, DRAW!

*Example: When I was a boy and building a tree house with my best friend, I jumped out of the tree and landed on a board with a long rusty nail in it that went through my tennis shoe and into my foot resulting in my first tetanus shot. This is one of possibly tens of thousands of tree memories that my subconscious mind holds: tree rain in the redwoods, aspens in the Fall, cedars stooped with the weight of snow like old, tired men, flycasting in the wind, apples, stealing apples . . . and the endless windings of dominoes that trail from each branch of each tree.