Tree Ring and Temporalization

The rings of a tree express not only its temporality, but its spatiality, as well as how the two interact. From the perspective of the established tree, the formation of a new ring constitutes an expansion of it, and, hence, an organic self-Spatialization that is, arguably, not a conscious one. But, unlike other growths, such as a leaf or a fruit, the new ring is incorporated into the tree, expressing the latest event in its history. Likewise, a new human action becomes incorporated into its autobiography by a process of Retaining, which most familiarly occurs at moments of self-awareness. Furthermore, just as a new ring expresses the latest development of a tree upon the completion of its formation, Retaining depicts an action as complete, even if it happens to not have fulled the purpose that originally motivated it, i. e. it immobilizes the action, just as a photograph does to what it represents. In so doing, it Temporalizes the action, by establishing the captured moment as the latest in a sequence that extends back to not only the beginning of the action, but to the entire history that led up to it. Just as in the development of a tree ring, human experience is constituted by this ongoing interplay of Spatialization and Temporalization.