A tree in the road on North Street, in downtown Beaufort, SC (photos by Luke Frazier)
There’s this tree, and it’s in the road. It’s on North Street, between Charles and Newcastle. Sitting right there like a parked car, taking up space. You must veer slightly over the double yellow line to continue driving west from Charles Street, unless you have some kind of super skinny car. It sits along the south side of St Helena’s Anglican Church, with some kind of office windows overlooking it. I decided to call it IRT, for In-Road-Tree.
I don’t remember the first time I passed IRT, though I’m sure it registered as a slight oddity. I’m the kind of person that notes and enjoys things that present as slightly off-kilter, or out of place, or emitting a kind of juxtaposition vibe. This preference for the unusually expressive permeates my taste in art, favoring varieties of performance art, Dada, Surrealism, abstract sculpture, self-taught & primitive, and weird soundscapes. It used to fuel my constant quest for intoxication.
In a similar attraction for odd angles, I was briefly into postmodern theory back in grad school. I loved the heady mix of intellectualism and cultural criticism, though its overall circular density and flatulent verbosity eventually drove me a bit bonkers. It’s all part of my overall curious mental twist and juvenile sense of humor that I’m no longer fighting, explaining, or defending. Thank God I have a few years left to live without so much concern about what other people think of me.
Anyway, swerving around IRT once again on a recent trip to town brought me to a deep consideration of the idea of accommodation and its overlap with identity. Who does this tree think it is, sitting there in the road? Okay, it was certainly there before the road came along but didn’t it consider yielding to the almighty progress of man?!
I guess in this case there is mutual accommodation. Of course we have to go around, but the tree itself has to deal with the road over its roots and the anxiety of potentially getting hit. IRT’s identity had to shift though, from a beautiful oak minding its own business to part of Beaufort’s street grid.
It reminded me of the shapes I’ve assumed throughout the years of life and the roads taken and not. Ourselves and our imagined selves dancing through the years, relationships, jobs, places, and beliefs.
The word identity has the Latin root idem, which means “same.” As if identity were a static thing. In my life I’ve inhabited quite a few identities, a good number of which were false starts. Didn’t we all try on different personas and try
to figure out where we fit?
This desire continued for decades. Nothing seemed to stay the same with my identity, at least around the periphery. I spent a lot of time accommodating to what I thought others thought was cool or relevant, a people pleaser of sorts and there’s not enough column space to get into all the context and history for that.
The history of the IRT is not known to me, I imagine it had to do with the tree being spared when the road was put in. That begs the question, though, why not just move the road over a few feet? The road accommodated the identity of the tree and in a grand Venn diagram sort of way, a shared space, maybe a third space, was created.
My point is that we mold identity by accommodating a center of sorts, a “comfortable-enough identity” we choose to share to various degrees with the rest of the extended selves around us. We hold together the associations, loosely at times, dress it up in clothes, choosing from all sorts of fashions and fabrics.
This is not as nihilistic as it may sound. I believe there is a core of identity in all of us, you could call it sacred if you are so inclined, that both shines and seeks the light of others. I mean, how good does it feel when you share a really personal part of yourself and it is received lovingly by a friend, family member, or even a virtual stranger? That is your center, and it does hold.
There is this idea out there in literature and beyond that instead of convincing ourselves of our terminal uniqueness, we can instead embrace the notion that everything and everyone else out there in the world is just more of us. We are a fraction of the human immensity and reflect all those sacred cores burning inside the unbelievable scope of characters that make up this messy, beautiful world.
The next time I pass the IRT I think I’ll stop and place my hand on that finely aged and lovely bark. Perhaps say hello and offer it confirmation that it is seen and appreciated, a tree right there in the road, a fellow traveler.
