loneliness

Last month the Helsinki police found a man in his fifties who had passed away in his apartment. They had been contacted because the payments for bills from his bank account stopped coming when the money in it ran out. It turns out, the man had been dead for three years already. He had no close friends or relatives who missed him in that time.

A newer report about a similar case was in the paper today. A landlord had tried to get in touch with his renter, but to no avail. Having read of the previous case, he decided to investigate the lack of returned calls and letters. A peek and a sniff through the mail slot of the renter's door told the landlord all he needed to know. The renter had passed away a month earlier.

Cases like these remind me how truly alone people here can be. In a more community-oriented culture it would seem impossible for this to happen. To not be missed by anyone for three years is almost too much to comprehend. It is sad, and a corner of my heart weeps.

Tahina spectabilis

A curious and fascinating discovery on the island of Madagascar was brought to my awareness through a blurb in the daily pape. Why such random things capture my interest I cannot say, especially since I am generally out of the horticultural loop; perhaps I just like the random detail it embedded into my Friday. But also, what drew my attention about this new genus of palm tree that was accidentally discovered by a French cashew farmer, is the fact that it flowers only once after decades of growth and then dies. "The nutrient reserves of the palm become completely depleted as soon as it fruits and the entire tree collapses and dies a macabre death," reports the Royal Botanic Gardens' description of this giant palm tree that can grow up to 18 meters and sprouts fan-shaped leaves up to 5 meters in diameter.

Botanists cannot explain how this species of palm within the tribe Chuniophoeniceae ended up in Madagascar, especially since the other known genera of the tribe grow in the regions of Nannorrhops in Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kerriodoxa in southern Thailand and Chuniophoenix in Vietnam, southern China and Hainan. There you have it. I was attracted to the international mystery behind the means of plant migration. Tahina's unknown mystery spurred my imagination to sketch a mental picturebook story akin to the one I wrote and illustrated in grade school entitled, "Why Penguins can't Fly," a language class assignment inspired as a follow-up for the story "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in your Ear." As for "Why Tahina grows in Madagascar," well, the story has to be tied to the escapades of a curious red-ruffed lemur named Sifuy!

The lifecycle of this palm also worked like a magnet to attract another literary memory from my brain's files. The association came from Colleen McCullough's book The Thorn Birds, a title alluding to mythical creatures that search for a thorn tree from the day of their birth. Once they find one, they impale themselves on a thorn, singing the most beautiful song ever heard as they die. It is the piercing processes of life and death side by side that produce these associations. A thorn bird kills itself to fulfill its purpose of singing an exquisite and unique melody that can only happen when it dies. It is its inescapable destiny. The palm tree's similar fate is to live a long and full life, but to flower only once, producing rare fruit and seeds from a tall crowning display of tiny white flowers. Destined to die in order to give life. I've heard that story before...

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Read about Tahina sp. at the Royal Botanic Gardens link