The Devil’s Tree

I attended elementary school, perhaps the second or third grade just when I went to visit with a friend the school. The high school of the same institution was glued to one side of the primary. Secondary, behind the yard, climbing the stairs that were to one side of the store. It was right there where we decided to go for a walk. Just up the stairs – the place was alone, classes had already finished doing time – when my friend told me: “That tree is there is the tree of the devil.” It was just at the end of the stairs, not very big, on the right, at the entrance of the high school. We approached with some care to see that the tree had looked like any other tree if it were not for one thing: its trunk was saturated with messages carved by the high school students. You looking to explain why that tree was special, why should we care to have him as something demonic Cabe add one fact: the school was Catholic – read messages. What were they saying? Basically two things: declarations of love and profanity of all kinds; Little or nothing beyond that. A while later we left, but from that moment that place and its tree had a certain aura special, without knowing exactly why. Years later I went to study at that high school. The sense, we could say “sacred”, which he attributed as a child to that space had already been blurred. Now I understood that this place was no more than a meeting space with friends (and friends) in the recesses.

Now, in hindsight, I can understand how that sacredness was constructed from a social understanding. Let me explain: The social and symbolic meaning tree was associated with the entry (in the literal sense and metaphorical time) to secondary school life and what it implies in biological and cultural terms passed puberty. At just 7 or 8 years, this sense was unknown to me, at least as an experience. Entering secondary school, it could be said, is already in itself a rite of passage, especially if we consider that the primary where he studied was only for men and the secondary, mixed. Thus the tree and its loving / aggressive messages represented to me – unborn child – not yet initiated – two frontiers: sexuality and forbidden language. The taboos around these themes led my friend (or one who has come up with the name) to catalog that tree as demonic property. And it was, then, the distance in relation to this alien sacralized generational dimension that somehow that place: The tree symbolize a veiled demonized by social passage, yet to be discovered.