The Story of the Man and the Tree

Chapter 3

The Story of the Man and the Tree

III

A man. A tree. A story. That's what this is about. But sometimes, with stories, such as this one, it is not simply about what it is about. Sometimes, the story does not simply comprise of a man and a tree and becomes a story. Sometimes the story is not about those things at all, such as that of a man, and a tree. Stories of flesh and plant life don't always consist of stories of work, coffee, bars, or of water, and sun, and oxygen. Sometimes it is about love, grief, virtue, growth, hardship, or even the thing of loneliness. Sometimes these are what the stories are about. Sometimes it matters more about the behind than the front ends of meaning. 

All this to say that this story is about a man and a tree. 

• 
  

There once was a stubborn man who was indifferent towards the outdoors, though he was a prig about it. He thought himself better than others. Strange, though, since he didn't think himself superior in mathematics, sciences, rhetoric, philosophy; he simply just thought himself better, and he was a prig about it. About all things. 

There was once a contemplative tree who was indifferent to the outdoors, after having contemplated it little. She was rather small about her thoughts. Small in the sense that she didn't talk much about the things she contemplated so, though she was big. She was bigger than ants, squirrels, flowers, bushes, and least of all (,) men. She did not like to contemplate but found herself doing much of it, in order to fill the days, of course.

On a contemplative, stubborn, and indifferent day, a man met a tree and vice versa. They met because of the ways in which the man would spend his days, in times like these, normally walking aimlessly. That was his aim. This aimlessness doesn’t normally turn out to make much of a story. Normally it does not leave any sort of impact on the man. He thinks his aimlessness will lead him to a beautiful woman one day, or a beautiful and overlooked stream. More than likely, he would like to tell you about how he aims to be aimless in times like these. You think the times he’s talking about involve the economy, or politics, or national relations between sovereign states. He’s talking about September. This is the month in which he aims to be purposefully aimless. 

He has yet to tell anyone about his terminal disease, which will no doubt be the cause of his untimely demise. Some might say he is being a prig about his fate. Others not. Certainly not him. He never thinks himself, and not himself a prig. This is what he tells the tree before any greeting is had between the two.

The tree normally doesn’t walk aimlessly in September. Nor any other time of year. This is because trees do not have legs to walk on, wings to fly on, nor fins to swim on (which would not be of much use on land anyway). This leaves the tree ever still. This leaves her to contemplate. She will contemplate clouds, she will contemplate stillness, and she will contemplate the earth’s rotation, but she will not contemplate the outdoors. That’s far too heady for her, she thinks. 

On this day, she is thinking about rocks. If she were to be something else, other than a tree, she would be a rock. Now, this is not to say she would like to be a rock, but that she feels that a rock would be better. Better than a tree, perhaps. She would much rather prefer being a bird, or a dog, or an owl. She would not like to be a rock, a piece of dirt, and especially not a human. Though, she would rather be a piece of dirt or a rock than to become human. 

The problems that plague her and humans, she feels, are similar but very different. Humans, yes, do deal with stillness. Not in the sense that they cannot move, but in a mental sort. Some of the time, humans do not move, like those in hospital or those who happen to be babies, but this tree does not make it to hospital nearly as much as she’d like and she does not know the structural development of a baby (nothing other than pure guesses, of course).  

Humans, yes, do deal with envy, but not in the notion that this tree feels, for humans do not normally wish to be other things, such as dirt or rocks. Humans feel envy for other humans. They want what others have, who others have, they want to be what they can but are not. She has dealt with envy for a very long time, and yet never felt it in the way humans do. She feels envy in the sort of way that she does not like what she is very much: a being taller than most things (except for those of which she is not), a being who does not die (as personal studies show), and a being who does not have any say in what goes on around them. Humans are of a different sort, they get to choose who they are, and who they are envious of. This tree does not. As far as the Bureau of Annual Happenings’ census says (of which she is the chair), 100% of the population have the exact same feelings of envy across the board. No, humans are much too complicated for her. They also seem constantly miserable. 

“I have a terminal disease that I have not told anyone about. It will no doubt result in my untimely death,” the man says to the tree.

“Why tell me?” she responds.

“If I tell no one, others will think me a prig! I’d very much like to avoid that! Though, I haven’t really given it any thought to whether I am a prig or not.”

“They might give you some slack, on account of you dying.”

“Fair point. Say, when are you going to die?”

“I am not sure I can die.”

“Lucky b*****d.”

“How so?” the tree asks while not moving in any particular direction.

“Well, you get a long, perhaps infinite, time to live, not hindered by cancer. You don't have to think about death in my sense, so you are lucky, you b*****d. Also, you get made into pencils and stuff. That’s what I’d call a helpful legacy and/or profession.” He shuffles his feet along the ground. 

“Pencils… What are pencils?”

“A pencil is a little wooden stick that has rocks in it. It allows us to write down stuff people don’t want to read.” He gestures his arm around the park, “You’ve probably seen a young man try to draw pretty girls with one of them.”

“Ah. I believe I have. Is that really what they do with us when we fall? Pencils?”

“Not always. Sometimes you turn into the sheet of white that the boy is drawing the pretty girl on.”

“Hmmm. Perhaps I have been quick to judge my uses.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t help to judge one’s uses, but to just do what one wants. Unless that’s what they want to do. Judge one’s use, that is.” He looks at his feet.

“I do not have much to do other than to judge.”

“Sorry. I guess I’m out of line.”

“Yes, you are. The pathway is a rabbit’s length away from you.”

“Have you been here long?” The man looks at the tree but doesn’t find any eyes to watch.

“It would seem.”

“Is it nice?” 

“I’m not sure. Is it?”

“Well, I’ve certainly seen better. I’ve certainly seen worse, too.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hm.”

The man scans the park for people. He finds a few scattered about. Surely not here for long, due to the chilling September weather, he thinks.

“Would you say yourself happy?” He looks up the waving tree.

“Those thoughts hurt, so I rarely get around to them.”

“Sorry.”

“There is no need. I like talking, even if it is about sad things.”

“I don’t.”

A pause comes over them. The man feels guilty, but he is surely doing a favour for the tree, talking to it and all. 

“Would you say yourself happy?” the tree asks the small man.

“I would say in times like these I am.”

“I have heard the term before, but it confuses me. Talk of politicians, scandal, suppression. I don’t understand what women and men are always on about with ‘times like these’.”

“I’m talking about September.”

“Is everyone talking of September?”

“Not likely. They don’t know September as I do.” He looks to the sky. “No one does.”

“How do you know September? Did you grow up with them?” A bird lands on a branch of hers.

“Well, yes. When remembering September, I often think to the moment when my dad got angry with me after I said I didn’t quite fancy the work environment. He said that I need a steady aim in my life. So I decided that for the rest of my life, I would be aimless. That got hard after a month, so I stopped. But every September that I found, I would always crave aimlessness. He cast me out every September. I didn’t understand why, at age ten, I needed to think of work environments. I thought I understood when I got older, but now that I’m dying to something that won’t even kill me to my face, I have lost all sense of understanding for his nonsense.” His shoulders shrivel. He sinks into himself.

“I see. How long is it that you have left? Time, that is,” the tree asks.

“Till the end of the month. Funny. I won’t even get time to make a plan for what to do.”

“Cause of the whole aimless thing, correct?”

“Bang on.”

The man takes his seat on the ground around her. He rests his back on her trunk. Looking into the distance, he sees no beautiful women or streams.

“Is this a nuisance?” the man inquires.

“Not particularly. Go ahead.” She feels his strange human warmth. This is not a feeling she has ever quite gotten used to. “Do you have children, friend?”

“Sometimes. They’ve grown old. Well, oldish.” A sigh escapes him, “I wonder if I’ve said much nonsense to them. Is it the type of nonsense that they’ll later disregard?”

“You don’t sound quite the part of a fool. There are plenty of fools who have walked these paths through the years. You don’t strike me as being woven from their cloth.”

A reassurance comes upon him, “Thank you. For someone who doesn’t go in much, you’re a wonderful conversation partner.”

“I try.” If she could smile, she would.

The day went on as days tend to do. They continued to talk for a long while. Nothing of importance in the normal sense. Perhaps it was important to each of them, but they wouldn’t say if you asked. The man grew cold and went home, but before he left, he promised to come back the next day. The tree didn’t think about tomorrow. She doesn’t tend to worry herself with Tomorrow. It comes, it goes. 

No names were ever exchanged between the two, though they had them. Names seem a futile thing sometimes. A name doesn’t tell you anything about who the person is. A name doesn’t show what someone’s really about. A name is only good for first impressions in a boardroom of men who are already keen on giving each other small paper rectangles with their names on them. That’s where names matter, but not here, not between a dying man and an ever-growing tree. They have no use for little paper rectangles, they wouldn’t know what to do with a boardroom, and they sure don’t need labels. 

• 
  

A cold air covers the city that the man and the tree live in. Birds are ready to start travelling to god-knows-where, and the people ponder as to where the insects go during the cold season. They sure do notice when the bugs decide to come back in the warmer times.

The man walks to the end of the park where a tree stands, alone. Tomorrow has come.

“Today I am alive, once again.” The man is now wearing a warmer coat than yesterday’s.

“I see that you now wear a warmer coat.”

“I have. The weather outside is dreadful.” A dragon's breath of fog exits his mouth as he speaks.

“And you have come back to me,” she continues.

“Well, yes. I said I would, didn’t I?” The mentioning of the obvious has left him confused.

“Does that mean that there is not a wholly aimless nature to your behaviour?”

His eyes grow wide as he looks at her in shock. This is new. He has never failed at his target for the month of September. One September, he went to a concert with a band who was touring the country, and he didn’t even like the music! But, he still ended up sleeping with the lead guitarist that night. He never planned that! Or another time he met the Mayor! They spent the weekend golfing together and laughing. Clubs in hand and beers nearby! Hard to aim for that one! Hah! How about when he flew to Europe for the whole month of September, trying out the local cuisine, meeting strangers, and consuming local art?! That was completely out of the blue! No one could have predicted that one! The one time he slips up, and this tree calls on him for it! What does she know of him? What does she know of him? She has been around for much longer than anyone he knows. She is a fount of overflowing knowledge. What then, should he make of this?! He aimed in the one time he plans on being aimless! That goes against the plan, damnit!

“I guess you’re right…” he finally spits out. “Maybe this wasn’t aimless.”

“I will offer you slack, for you are dying,” she jokes to herself, “This is presumably the last month of your life. Shall you spend it all not knowing of what comes next?”

He shuffles his feet and looks at the ground. What should he say? What should he do? He never really did think about this September being the last he will ever live, but he did know it. Somewhere deep down, anyway.

“I’m unsure of all that. What I am sure of is that you are good company to a dying man,” he says. 

If she could, she would blush.

“Last night I slept well, but I was beaten with the idea of how one of your kind might sleep if you can,” the man says.

“Sleep. Is that when you people close your eyes and drift away?”

“Precisely.”

“Well,” she starts, “no, I don’t sleep. Well, not in the same way. The nights are always calm, so in ways, I do drift. I’ll lose track of the moon as I watch it fall from the sky. I'll look away for a moment and then look back and it has moved to the other corner of the night, right before me. It is not a state of total drift, but blissful silence. I can relax. I can push down the thoughts of all things and just, well, just be.”

A satisfying answer. A beautiful answer. The man thinks to himself how little he knows of sleep. One of these days he shall stay awake as he sleeps to see what it is like.

“Do you-” the man starts, but just as quickly cuts himself off. He realizes the danger of the question he’s about to ask. The question that has plagued mankind for so long, but curiosity nips at his heels. What does she know of them? A question that would be important for all of humanity. A question that may just damage her. How would you even go about asking it? It’s not like there’s a universal term outside of people-speak. 

“What is it?” she asks, confused at the hesitancy that he shows.

“Nothing,” he decides, “Nothing at all.”

“You are a strange one.”

“Not for long.”

• 
  

Each day the man comes to the park, spending hours talking with the tree asking questions, answering questions, and telling stories. He feels worse by the day, a sickness eats at him. He does not mind, however. The promise of a new friend who won’t leave is too good to be disrupted by death. The temperature continues to descend, and the leaves threaten to fall right along with it. 

The tree has no sense of when the man’s life will expire. The sun rises and falls (but that’s just an illusion caused by the earth spinning round), and the man comes to the park, but there are no numbers in the tree’s head, no calendars or dates. No Tomorrow, until recently. It seems that Tomorrow only brings sadness now. Washed with despair, the tree now gets to contemplate that which it doesn’t: grief. There is little knowledge of death to one who stands still, there is no sense in entertaining it; too much uncertainty lies with the one they call Death. Grief rarely appears to those who don’t have anything to lose. No arms, no legs, no ears, no eyes, no friends, no future, no past, there is nothing. But suddenly, when something does appear, it is a new and grand experience. Even when it is just one small thing, such as a dying man, it hurts all the more to take it away. Take one drop from the ocean and it misses nothing. It smashes the rocks just the same. Take away a drop from a man in the desert, and he loses everything. He will not live the same after that. 

So when the sun rises, and the man does not come, you wait. You wait until the sun falls, and even then, when no one comes, you wait. When the cycle repeats itself, you wait.

If she could cry, she would.