Homo Lignum
Lignomaniac
When my hand touches the surface of wood, when I pat lightly its springy substance or gently feel the coarse bulges of the bark, warmth pours into me, filling me with sunlight, all my troubles and fears disappear in sweet mist, and I am dissolved in iridescent radiance.
This is one of my earliest memories: father brought me to the factory where he worked. I enter a room (a hall, I guess), I’m confused by the multitude of strangers, by the sounds of various machines. And then, in this alien uncomfortable world, I suddenly see a golden stream pouring from the hands of a tall gloomy man. Sparks are flying everywhere around him. My head spins, and I enter what seems to be a pillar of bright light. I came to, several days later, bandaged, in the hospital, feeling an unbearable ache in my head: I had gotten under the knife of the factory’s chipping machine and was seriously injured.
I have never had friends; my friends were trees. Dwarves and giants, knotty and slender, they understood, loved, and protected me. The flesh taken off the tree does not die; a shaving and a plank are still alive until they find their home in the orange heat of fire. All my life I spoke with fire logs and boards, caressed timbers, whispered to tiny coals.
When I was young, I found a large, strong pinewood box at a dump, and I have been sleeping in it ever since. When it freezes outside, I’m not cold in it even without blankets, and it brings coolness in the summer heat. When the night closes my eyes, my box rocks me like a magic ship and takes me beyond the clouds where everything shines with golden sunlight.
Igor Makarevich
March 1996
