2021-05-01 Yesterday, I…

Yesterday, I...

saw cotton balls as I was walking to buy yogurt…hundreds of them along Harold Cuzner inside UPLB. I’ve seen cotton balls on the ground before but not as many as those and not as fine. Those cotton balls were thinner and silkier. And why were they so dispersed? They literally filled the side walks of Harold Cuzner along the College of Human Ecology and the Physical Sciences Building. Some even went as far as Freedom Park. We’ve had very strong winds recently, but even strong winds can’t scatter these balls this wide, let alone produce this many. These balls could only come from something big and wide.

And I saw it.

The balls all fell from that large tree that grew along the bridge that cuts through a stream of the Molawin river. That tree which used to put a large shade over a good part of Andres P. Aglibut Avenue. Used to, because yesterday it was all barren. Almost no leaves. Just balls of cotton pierced on the ends of long, slender branches, waiting for a single gentle puff to set them free.

This was the same tree that my friend used to call “my tree”—as if she gave birth to it. This was the same tree whose large roots we stared at as we sat down on the benches placed below it like pews for the pilgrim to sit down in reverence.

We thought it was a Dao tree (dracontomelon dao). And why not? It was gargantuan, sturdy, shady, and hard—traits that made the Dao one of the most famous native trees of the Philippines. But our intuition, no matter how important and beautiful, is not always right. By its nature, it favors instantancy, which conserves energy especially when we have less of it, but also makes us so prone to illusions and mistaken conclusions. It takes slow and patient thought to get to the truth. It’s unsexy, sometimes boring, sometimes complex and unpoetic. But it works.

To know that the Dao tree is in fact a Kopak tree (Ceiba petandra) involved taking a photo of it, submitting that photo to iNaturalist, receiving a clue that the tree comes from the genus Ceiba, and googling what Ceiba species are growing in the Philippines. All that work corrected our initial intuition and revealed the tree’s real identity.

Events like these remind me to slow down and to appreciate the some times not-so-instant way of seeing things as they really are. I am reminded that knowing the truth is as beautiful if not more beautiful that receiving an insight from who knows who.