Some Pig

I wonder if we know we are all Charlottes.

Have you read Charlotte’s Web? I almost have the beginning chapter memorized. Not word for word of course, but I can see the line-drawings of Fern fighting her daddy with his ax, desperately needing to save the runt pig. And I can see her pushing the pig in a baby stroller, and I can see her feeding that pig a bottle. And at first, you think the book is about Fern.

But then you meet Charlotte. She’s quiet and mellow and talks elegantly and calmly, even when she speaks of wrapping up flies and biting them and eating them. She’s brave and smart and confident. She’s undaunted and unafraid, like a friends of mine. So then you think the book is about Charlotte. And really it is. I mean, the book is named after her right?

But then you see that Charlotte sort of falls in love with Wilbur, the pig. Wilbur, the ordinary runt of a pig that eats slop and sleeps in poop and is so petrified of being butchered he can’t even think straight. Charlotte sees Wilbur. I mean REALLY sees him. She sees a life worth saving. She sees a life worth celebrating, and so she creates art to try and make everyone see what she sees. She spins a web, and with her silver threads she writes the words, “Some Pig,” Suddenly the book becomes all about Wilbur because Charlotte has made it so.

And the people take notice. And the people start to believe. And the people crowd around to see the T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C pig. All because Charlotte saw something nobody else did, and she wasn’t afraid to stand behind that vision and share it.

I met a couple amazing artists in the Oklahoma City area. They have all sorts of creative plates spinning, but one plate in particular caught my attention. They use the app Instagram and a hashtag of #treecult to document with photographs a local tree they fell in love with.

One solitary OKC tree that sits on the corner of a piece of fenced in spacious farmland. These artists, they took notice. They got a vision. They wrote “Some Tree” in the inner-webs of Instagram. People started believing it was a magical tree. Why not?

I ventured out to take my own pictures of the tree, and as I stood there with my car hazards on and my kids sitting in the car cheering me on, and cars zooming by with drivers staring, I snapped my own photos of this T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C tree. I romantically imagine some day we okc instagramers will all convene there, under that tree, climbing the barb-wire fence to get to it and sit beneath its tiny branches and eat a picnic lunch, all because someone believed.

I wonder if we know we are all Charlottes, creating ways to attribute great worth to the people and places and things surrounding us. Creating ways to make someone, some place, something, larger than life.

All it takes is a little soul thread and some passionate gumption to scale the barbed-wire and make something T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C.

Tagged as: #treecult, benefactor, Charlotte's Web, creating, passion, support, worth