Villa Incognito

Tom Robbins is my favourite American writer – so funny, so thoughtful, so anarchic.
There is no way to summarise his books. I will just give you a quote. A fox and a tanuki ( a Japanese badger with oversized scrotum 😉 )talk about trees and people:
“…Trees are damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that except people.
Maybe he (the tanuki) had a point. Trees do generate oxygen; man just breathe it up. stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place, man are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species, man threatens the existence of these species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures, men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can’t rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn’t it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity – the calmer spiritual presence – a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, waht maple or cypress ever tried to sell you something you didn’t want? …”