Umbrella Trees

Well, I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I have had absolutely no idea as to what to post about. So, today I just took a peek in the Adagia to see if anything caught my eye, and, lo and behold, it did...

"All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = umbrellas."

I don't really know why this caught my eye - maybe because when I read this, I immediately thought of umbrella trees, which made me think of Dr. Seuss, and then I went on a long thought tangent about how awesome Dr. Seuss is - but that is far beside the point.

I'm not entirely sure if I even fully understand this quote, but it made me think a little about seeing things the way they are and where exactly inspiration, and how there is nothing that is truly original. This quote is so true, and it is lovely to think about. Of course all of our ideas come from nature. What else have we ever needed except nature? It is because of nature that we are able to survive. It is nature that was here before us, and it will be nature that will be here long after we are gone... We would be idiotic to think that we are so much better than nature that we can come up with better ideas than nature. We should be inspired by nature.

I also thought that it was interesting how, in this statement, Stevens is merely stating a truth (things the way they are). However, in stating this truth, he uses the imagination in order to illustrate reality. It was because of my imagination, and how I immediately pictured umbrella trees, that I was able to (kind of) understand what Stevens is saying. Yet again, he shows the relationship between the imagination and reality by explaining reality using the imagination.