"Theodore Sturgeon - Slow Sculpture" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

the old tree and brought its gnarled limbs into sharp re-
lief, tough brown-gray creviced in velvet. Only the com-
panion of a bonsai (there are owners of bonsai but they
are a lesser breed) fully understands the relationship.
There is an exclusive and individual treeness to the tree
because it is a living thing and living things change--and
there are definite ways in which the tree desires to change.
A man sees the tree and in his mind makes certain exten-
sions and extrapolations of what he sees and sets about
making them happen. The tree in turn will do only what
a tree can do, will resist to the death any attempt to
do what it cannot do or to do in less time than it needs.
The shaping of a bonsai is therefore always a com-
promise and always a cooperation. A man cannot create
bonsai, nor can a tree. It takes both and they must un-
derstand one another. It takes a long time to do that. One
memorizes one's bonsai, every twig, the angle of every
crevice and needle and, lying awake at night or in a
pause a thousand miles away, one recalls this or that line
or mass, one makes one's plans. With wire and water and
light, with tilting and with the planting of water-robbing
weeds or heavy, root-shading ground cover, one explains
to the tree what one wants. And if the explanation is well
enough made and there is great enough understanding
the tree will respond and obey--almost.
Always there will be its own self-respecting highly in-
dividual variation. Very well, I shall do what you want,
but I will do it -my way. And for these variations the
tree is always willing to present a clear and logical ex-
planation and, more often than not (almost smiling), it
will make clear to the man that he could have avoided it
if his understanding had been better.
It is the slowest sculpture in the world, and there is,
at times, doubt as to which is being sculpted, man or
tree.
So he stood for perhaps ten minutes, watching the flow
of gold over the upper branches, and then went to a
carved wooden chest, opened it, shook out a length of
disreputable cotton duck. He opened the hinged glass at


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one side of the atrium and spread the canvas over the
roots 'and all 'the earth to one side of the trunk, leaving
the rest open to wind and water. Perhaps in a while--a
month or two--a certain shoot in the topmost branch
would take the hint and the uneven flow of moisture up
through the cambium layer would nudge it away from