The Tree in the Garden
I’m sitting on the front doorstep of my house, smoking a cigarette from a pack I bought on new year’s. It’s not April yet, it’s not even March, and yet there is a warm shine of sun pushing over the grass. I look at the tree that looks over the driveway, and this sun, miraculous in its presence, carves strong highlights and shadows that are sketchable. And, so I sketch it. The cigarette that I once was smoking is irrelevant now, and I try and multitask and hope no ash drops onto this piece I am doing. And though, I could never draw trees or landscapes, this tree is maybe one exception I make – the sketch is obscure and flat, but, I continue, because this tree that stands between the road and this house is majestic in its complete independence.
I wonder what this tree knows. It knows something, otherwise it wouldn’t be standing so proudly as it is, it roots not so entwined with the earth, the wind not so in tune with the leaves. It has knowledge that is abstracted into its structure – and I wonder if it knows what will happen to me. Can a tree, so full of certainty see the uncertainty in something else, see my eyes flitter across careers and loves and hobbies and griefs. Can it see the shaken husk so full of life and yet so scared to live? I hope it doesn’t, I respect this tree too much to want to show this vulnerability. And so, for a minute I am just as sure as this mighty sycamore is. I think of the layers of rings I’m sure it boasts in it’s trunk, and I imagine the veins that pump in my neck, and my heart, and my twitching hands. We breath together. We live together, it’s arms outstretched welcoming nature, mine closed and wrapped around my chest, though, we both shiver together, it with its leaves trembling and falling, mine with my bones, cold to the touch.
Birds fly across it and in between, weaving in and out and twittering like kids playing hide and seek, and the tree remains patient, so strong in its resolve, I breath in the tobacco while it breaths in the carbon dioxide, providing me with oxygen I don’t require in this moment. The drawing has been left, and I hope to add annotations instead, an apology for not doing any of this moment justice – for this moment is temporary, and already it is fleeting. The sun is going down, I feel it on my skin, and alongside, goosebumps rise from the coolness seeping through my knitted jumper. Already, thoughts of to do lists and meal preps begin to loom from behind me, and my domestic life begins to pull me back, and I know that this may never be again, though I will still be here, and the tree won’t move, but this feeling, this thought, this wedge in the timeline of events and emotions, is rare and ungraspable.
But, like these chores that begin to nag at my brain, the moon pulls at the sun – first a slight nudge, and then a certain, definitive, unbudging pull. And, suddenly the house, the one I first escaped, feels safer and warmer and altogether better than sitting on this doorstep, this slightly damp doorstep. The moments gone, that was it, the cold stone on my jeans clasping shut the vignette. All the pleasures that overrode the logical and pessimistic parts of my conscious fade away. This distant memory of the pretty tree in the garden leaves, has gone, and it is just a slight déjà vu when I see it now, it was just a moment, just, and now, a cool camaraderie seems to communicate between us as I watch it from the window.
I still remember it, and see it, and the emotion and wonder is still there, though, its lives being lived in parallel, occasionally meeting at points but always diverting again. And, so, I wonder, when I next will be able to communicate with this tree.
I am an experimental writer looking at all the different ways to write and communicate ideas and I am interested in the euphoria and melancholy of growing up. I live in the countryside so find a lot of my work reflects with nature and its strength and emotion.