Also Old (But Applicable). I'm Too Exhausted To Be Creative.

I've always thought the verb “to pine” was an interesting phrase. The dictionary defines it as, “to yearn deeply; suffer with longing; long painfully.” Not often does one find a word that can be an inanimate object when used as a noun and mean something completely opposite when used as a verb. What does pain have to do with a coniferous tree?

Well, let’s look at the definitions more carefully: “To long painfully.” I guess trees are pretty long. That doesn’t connect unless the length described here does not refer to distance at all, but to time. Pine trees are evergreens. Forever green. Fitting, because when one pines for something or someone, it isn’t usually a short-term thing. Maybe the word suggests a pain and suffering that is continuous, just like the needles that tenaciously hold their color. Stagnant. Ever-green. Like a wellspring of hurt.

The word can also mean “to fail gradually in health or vitality from grief, regret, or longing.” This also seems to be a contradiction. Other trees look sickly and dead in the winter, whereas evergreens do not. Sometimes they seem like the only thing alive in winter. It turns out that that is also false. Evergreens are just as sickly in the winter as other trees, they just don’t show it. Photosynthesis stops almost completely but not altogether. They respirate and have just the right porous surface on their needles so as not to lose too much water. They survive, but barely. So I guess it’s just a façade. A dodge or hustle to throw off those who would put pines in the same class as ruddy aspen or cowardly oak.

Archaic: “to suffer grief or regret over.” What does a tree have in common with this definition? Does a tree regret? Is the mighty pine an optimist? Or a procrastinator? Maybe lingering green is not just resiliency but simple foolhardiness. Could these trees not just send their water and nutrient stores down into dark roots like other trees? Why so stubborn? Why waste the energy to keep creating food when the sky has clouded over? Maybe the needles that rescue its color in the winter suffocate the tree in the summer. Maybe it regrets this; not growing more in the summer and so forces itself to survive in winter. The green is more a funeral shroud of grief and regret than an indicator of life. A sign of a fool’s hope.

Before 900 AD in Middle English the word meant, “pinen: to torture, torment, inflict pain, be in pain.” This green is self-deprecating, a funeral dirge for hopeless optimism. An insidious form of self-torture. Certainly pines cannot be used for torture! you say? Unless the wood is fashioned into a cross, bored into to form a stocks, or cut down to erect a gallows. The needles even inflict pain. Some say to protect themselves. I say it’s to torture those who don’t understand the pine’s message.

Pining may be fitting indeed.

[Keep following cuz it's gettin' started in ha. In here!]