A jolly tree

There's a tree outside my house.

When I look out of the window I see its spindly branches and its not-too-healthy leaves. But it's a tree nonetheless.

The cars run down the road and the construction goes on beside, houses rise and fall, people walk by and trample the pavement into the ground.

And the tree is there. It has always been there and will continue to be there until they cut it down.

Old trees don't die, they merely fade away. First the leaves go, then the branches, then the trunk, leaving only a rotting stump which breeds a fecund variety of life. I've never seen the life fade out of the eyes of a dying tree, never heard its hacking coughs in the last stages of its terminal illness, never sat by and held its hand when death comes in the front door with his grisly hands and black cowl. I've never buried a tree, taken a spade and thrown in the last bit of earth into the hole and set a little memorial stone up for people to trip over and drunk people to piss on.

Yet slowly, surely, the tree outside my window is aging. Once it overlooked a beach, now it overlooks cars, roads, fresh-faced freshmen, construction workers with faces downcast and grimy with toil, gibbering babies and noisy dogs. The sea breeze is now the wind from the onrushing buses, the monkeys now walk exclusively on two legs and adorn themselves with bright colours and brilliant objects, the salt air is now peppered with gravel and cement.

Still the tree remains. It's dying, or fading, but not so fast, not so quickly, not at all like how handphones are discarded monthly for the love of colourful advertisements and blaring jingles, not at all like how those evolved fishermen cast off their friends and wives and husbands like the water off a seagull's back. But still the tree fades, becoming more and more a background rather than a headpiece, an attendant lord rather than a sable prince.

It may not have a degree, it may not have a job, it may have no cash, credit cards, or bouncing whores. Yet it every day watches the sun rise, the sun set, the moon rise, the brilliance of stars in their firmament, and not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like this grand old sage. It'll watch as scholars come and go, children grow tall and beards fade to white, it'll stand by and gaze as I love, hate, fight, rage, attempt suicide, count my grey hairs, call my lawyer in to write my will, call my undertaker in to take measurements for my coffin. And remain silent and aloof except for the gentle laughter of the wind in its leaves.

Untouched and transcendent, it'll outlive me, I think. It'll outlive my significance. It'll outlive my photographs, writings, memories, cars, attachments, joys, sorrows, children, friends, students, ideals. To all human intents and purposes, immortal.

I'm going out tomorrow to buy a very large axe.