News From the Lawn Chair Day 12- The Tree of Death
Yggdrasil… A Norse Tree of Life…. it is a paradox to the sum of this war.
They fall like faded Autumn leaves, one by one. As their colour and life giving fluid, drains from their being, effecting their ability to maintain a firm grip on the branch. Their grasp falters and they slowly feel the tear of their connection to the main body and trunk of their community with no other option but to drift to the Earth on the wind, just another casualty amongst the many.
16 to 20 it may be, still in favour of the Alliance of Fire and no real way to fully know what the outcome of this battle may be, or if it really matters in the end.
Dead is as dead does and dead doesn’t DO much, but lay on the ground to watch as their fellow dying leaves fall to the ground around them. Each leaf an individual? Yes. But really, with numbers like these, they just pile up like yesterdays old trash, no longer any use to anyone.
What do dead leaves do? They feed the ground with nutrients as they fester and rot, feeding the other trees about them, helping them to become strong. Especially the coniferous trees. These trees do everything they can never to lose their leaves, they build and grow slowly and carefully hold on to every piny leaf they produce, as if each one is more precious than the next and to the others of that tree, they are.
The deciduous is built to let its leaves fall to the ground, it gets it strength from pushing out the old and building from the new. Its leaves are simply deemed as “fuel for the machine” and each leaf that drifts from the branch, causes celebration for the new one that will replace it. This tree never changes, it never alters. The world changes around it yet it continues its cycle of use and renewal. While the coniferous, always adapts. It watches the weather, it watches the environment and in time, it evolves with the natural ebb and flow of its surroundings.
To be on day 12 in a war, is no where near a long time… there have been wars that have gone on much longer. With higher than before blood counts fighting against higher numbers of warriors, it really has nothing to do with any skill or power at this point, just the basic science of which asset is better to have.
Is it better to be a tree with stronger leaves that have a flow of a more steady stream of blood, so that these leaves are able to cling to their host and continue their bid for life longer? Or is it better to have a more leaves, smaller leaves, leaves that really have little strength in character or being, just holding onto the branches in the front line, taking the hits to blanket the more powerful fighters for life next in line?
And of what does the tree suffer, as these leaves fall? Sure many of the leaves will grow back. Some stronger and more determined to be prepared to find a way to clutch to their perspective branches with more ardency then before. But then, many leaves will be lost, never to return. Only new, green, weak and unsure buds, wail take their place, not really able to understand the importance of building their ability to “hold on”.
Finally there will be the leaves that do not return and the buds that will not follow. These are the little dead spots on the tree that will never again see life, hope or renewal. How many of these dead spots will this war leave? Will it be so many, that other.
Which leaf are you and of which tree do you cling to or have you fallen from? What does your future hold, when the tree is bare and there is a tree standing right beside you, full of life, leaves and ready to block your sunlight for eternity, what will your tree then do?
Comments
Matt Black
That is indeed an elegant metaphor. However, in such a scenario, some leaves would have to pick themselves up from the ground and march back up the trunk. Finding their position at the end of the branch, they would greet their neighbour with a familiar smile, their bond strengthened in the crucible of battle.
As the sun rises in the morning, they would photosynthesise with a vengeance, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen like never before, forged into a single unit by their shared experience.
Matt Black
Brutus
That is of course, if they desire to return, as it is looking so far, the leaves have left, never to return.
Brutus House of The Hells Angels
Matt Black
Friend, never is a long time.
Matt Black