Yet Untitled 078 - The Watching Trees

An unlikely piece about a high-school reunion

Dearest Yet Untitler,

This instalment is a bit last minute, but, believe me, I’m chock-full of thoughts right now. I attended my 25-year school reunion this week. The school I attended has institutionalised nostalgia in a way that has made me keep my distance, but this year I went all in and it led to many surprises. I met many of my classmates for the first time in twenty five years (!) and I found the campus as beautiful as ever, with hundreds of tall, strong trees towering over its 70 acres. The campus was a forest research institute in the 1930s and has retained an unrivaled, diverse ecosystem that I was lucky to spend seven years of my life within. The place feels enchanted and also immediately enchanting, Miyazaki-esque in the suggestion of wonder, mystery and magic amid the foliage of its many, vast trees.

I perceived clearly this time that many of the sprites and fairies dwelling amid the trees of Doon, its buildings, its teachers and students are memories. It made me think about memory; particularly where it’s situated. Once, during a lecture at college, one of my literature professors planted the idea about memes - about memories existing between people - long before memes became the digital phenomenon they are today. The thought of it existing merely in individual minds is not only unsatisfying, but feels false.

We are keepers of each others’ stories

In the past week, I shared many anecdotes with my friends that were about them but they didn’t remember. I found that I was, in some way, a keeper of their stories; and they were, simultaneously, keepers of mine. Then, a friend told me about how he was happy to see that I still curved my fingers backwards in the direction of my body when I spoke - something I had never know as a truth about myself, even though it was right there, on my person. Given this, it feels very, very important for us to have been in each others’ presence over the past few days. We don’t seem to be quipped to see truths about ourselves on our own.

Thinking about it, people other than the ones we share long stretches of time with may also bear witness our truths, but of what importance would those truths be to them? Ok, so this guys bends his fingers backwards towards his body when he speaks. Weird.

As opposed to…

Nath still does that weird thing with his fingers but I guess that’s what makes him Nath. Let me tell him.

Like I mentioned above, I felt that it was precious to tell each other things like these over the past few days. There were both light and heavy things to be told and I found that they needed to be said in different ways.  They needed to be said but I think I missed a few chances to say some of them, thus I sit on my flight hurtling me away from this reunion chock-full of thoughts.

There’s a long version of this instalment in my head and a short one. But time is short - there were too many late nights laced with dancing and tequila, and - you know me, dear Yet Untitler - publish I must!

I’ll try to put the most truthful impression of this bouquet of thoughts in whatever emerges below.

The Watching Trees
Yesterday, I met a few trees who knew me.
Some trees were trees who outgrew me.
Some who now perhaps misconstrue me.
But all of them - towering watchers -
Had watched me,
And now it is to my children that they
Teach things that they taught me.

I walked under trees with those with whom
I was a child once,
I talk over the buzzing of bees whose loud drone 
Was mild once,
I remember one stinging me under my foot
Sending me into a dance once,
I dance with my fellow children who tell me that
My dancing sent them into a trance once.

I walk with a child who was definitely me once.
I tell him things that I needed to know once.
I tell this to my fellow children - just little taller than 
The stature they held once.
The trees bloom perhaps in salute.
The trees weep. The trees stay mute. 
Our children’s hearts are suddenly small.
The trees, they remain resolute; 
Our watchers they remain, watching our truth.

A flower blooms.
A sculpture dances in the dead of night
To the song that the trees sing it under the light 
Of a happy moon.
The moon watches,
Its children play.
The trees watch
As they hear me pray
That this dance of watching, singing and keeping,
Amid the laughter and the weeping,
May continue forever without ceasing.

May the trees, the moon and the children
Of then and now - 
May they be each other’s keepers forever
In some way
Somehow.

Thanks guys, this one’s for you - the ones with whom I’ll forever be a child. Some hand scattered us all in the same place, and we eventually bloomed in many different directions, but wow - just take a step back and see us from a distance. It makes one helluva picture.

Lots of love

V

PS…

Not all watching trees have branches and leaves.