the tree
A tree is a symbol of life and regeneration. It was around even when human beings were not, and will continue to survive. Its roots lie deep in the ground and feed off of the water of the earth deep below the human surface. From there the trunk springs and rises, leaving the ground far below and aspiring to reach heavenward. It lives and breathes and sprouts arms and fingers and other limbs that soon grow colorful leaves and scatter the ground year after year with fallen and lifeless descendants of these original leaves. The tree grows barren each year, yet once again regenerates and lives and breathes in color year after year, spring after spring.
Our serial killer culture is much like a growing tree, not yet reached its full height yet. Our culture lies at the roots and feeds the serial killer with whole oceans of harmful nutrients, traditions and technology and neglect and other evils. He grows from the roots, his reasoning growing more and more clouded with thoughts of killing. Just as the trunk grows and branches out, so a serial killer is born, and self-nurtured, and begins killing, adding skeletal arms and legs and limbs to his own psyche. The leaves are his victims-they begin as living and breathing organisms yet eventually fall to the ground and die. There are leaves that hang on to their branches longer than others, but eventually all the leaves fall to the barren ground below. The serial killer is a tree that is difficult to cut down, one that is often protected by our culture, the very source of its creation. We love the beauty of trees just as we obsess over serial killers and their crimes. Our wound culture paradoxically, in this metaphor, revolves around a living and natural organism of our own creation. We feed it just as it feeds us.