15 May Drink me

You can’t tell the tree is huge until you look down or out at the other trees, at the occasional person sitting on the lawn in the park, or walking a dog. It fills the window, but we could be at any height – until the adjacent window shows a view out and over the city. You can only tell its height, its scale in comparison. The presence of something can be shown by the absence of something else. The presence of the tree can be measured in the absence of the views over the park. The presence of its height is felt in not being able to see its tops. In drawing or painting the tree what is left out reflects what is there.

From underneath, the tree is undeniably heavy. I’m measured as tiny from here, not solid like the tree, not grounded, but amorphous, mobile, light. I don’t feel small ensconced within the tree from the balcony, but feel squashed, the space I should take up is encroached upon. From a distance it’s only one tree, it’s not a forest. The forests that loom and flicker in memories and stories grow exponentially larger as I think about them. The tree is tiny, and only one small symbol of other places, of vast landscapes, of tales that shift and are molded through times and cultures. The tree itself doesn’t change in these seconds – as has been established it appears to not change at all. It doesn’t lose its leaves, it grows imperceptibly, it certainly doesn’t care that it appears to me to be enormous then tiny. It stays constant so it must be me by turns shrinking and then growing outsized.