meshe

i’m not really sure what the word meshe means. maybe meshe is a symbol of something or someone that witnesses everything and that “nothing is unseen”. maybe meshe is god?, who sees everything that is going on. what i dont get is why le guin mentioned a tree in chapter 12.

she says, “a hemmen-tree… lies a hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide… with a hundred branches and on every branch a thousand twigs and on every twig a hundred leaves… ‘all my leaves are seen, but one, this one int he darkness cast be all the others. this one leaf i keep secret to myself. who will see it..?’ ” maybe the tree is the meshe, or the thing that sees everything because trees last a very long time. i wonder why she uses the number 100 many times in this quote, until she talks about the branches. maybe the branches she refers to are the many countries in the world, and the twigs are the many different people in those countries. maybe the leaves refer to the many different things a person can do, but the one leaf that can’t be seen, the darkness if the one ‘secret’ action or characteristic of the person that they don’t want anyone else to see, and the only ones that can see that one ‘dark leaf’ is themself, the meshe, or the one that can see everything. thats how i see it.