Ring Two — The Crooked Tree

02028

Lay down every story that calls you unusable.

Yakushima is a small round island off the south of Japan where it rains up to ten meters a year — the locals say it rains “thirty-five days a month.” Its mountain cedars, called yakusugi, grow slowly in the poor granite soil, which makes their wood dense with resin, which makes it nearly immortal.

For three hundred years of the Edo period, the island paid its taxes in cedar shingles. Crews felled tens of thousands of straight trees, because straight grain splits clean. They walked past the twisted ones — a spiraled trunk fights the blade and ruins the shingle. The gnarled trees were left standing as worthless.

They are the ancient ones of the island now. The greatest of them, Jōmon Sugi, was brought to the world’s attention in 1966 — a trunk more than sixteen meters around, its age disputed between roughly two thousand and seven thousand years. The straight cedars became roofs, and the roofs are gone. The tree that survived, survived because it was unusable.

In 02026, a city in the Nevada desert built its central tower in this tree’s shape, and burned it in one night. The book was born that week.

What flaw of yours has been quietly saving your life?

Knock once next September

This page will never ask you for anything.
No account. No list. It only gives.

— Ian ✦