What I see when I look up

I don't remember exactly when I started looking up.

It's the kind of thing that everybody does; no one really thinks about.

It was probably in New York -- when the frantic columns of civilization and crowding of psychic white noise heaved inward daily -- that I began truly looking at the sky through the trees.

In Union Square, where corporate chain stores and an obstacle course of shoppers, commuters and irate drivers ringed a stalwart patch of green, the trees gave me a glimpse of something unexpected.

In between the swaying leaves and the sky, there was something I couldn't explain.

Escape, sometimes euphoria, other times a sort of sublime tranquility -- these are things that are not exactly typical emotions on my part.

But at some point I found myself looking up at trees, through trees, day and night, whenever I could find them.

And when I looked up leaves always seemed so many different shades of green, blossoms brighter, stark branches more severe. On windy days, the air always seemed to kick my stomach and provide a kind of temporary high. And through the trees the sunlight, or moonlight, or fast- and slow-moving clouds always seemed to suggest a greatness that I can't explain, a whole that cannot be contemplated beyond its most basic parts.

There are many more kinds of trees here, or at least, different kinds of trees -- wide and low, with expansive criss-crossed branches, bare and intricate with colored flowers, tall and straight, or bent, with a pompom at the top.

But look up at them is one of my favorite things to do, and not entirely because there isn't much else to do.

There seems to be something primal about them, something sacred.

If I were ever to look for god, this is probably where I'd go first.