Sometimes,You Need To Let It Go.
A tree, a bird and her - a short.
Note: A short (with or) without purpose.
For the hundredth time this week, she closed the window. Annoyed that all the birds had been chirping non-stop for hours. Since long before the sun rose and long into the night, they chirped.
But one bird, in particular, seemed to irritate her constantly. And yet, she could never figure out why. Looking out the window from her home office, she had a view of what could be one of the loveliest trees in the street.
The tree was undamaged by storms and didn’t seem to turn yellow or get sunburned like the other trees when the sun shone its brightest.
And every time she looked at this soft, welcoming tree - she saw the small robin with a heart-shaped red mark on its chest. It seemed louder and more vigorous in its calls than the other birds. Something about the cuck and tuck noises got beneath her skin and made her bones feel hot.
When she had no work in the evenings, it seemed to be much louder. Obviously, though, but perhaps not to her, was that when she was working, she barely heard it at all - it was only when she had time to dwell on it that it became her focus. And the more she paid attention, the more she noticed it until she was unable to block it out anymore. She had gotten to the point it was all she could hear.
The blue tits were welcome; they came and went, friendly and sweet - and made hardly any noise. The swallows never seemed to land, floating on the wind like a kite. Their pointed wings and unique shape were a delight to watch. Magpies were annoying, yes, but the clacking of their clawed feet on metal was nothing in comparison to the robin.
It seemed to her that every time she looked out the window, the robin was there - looking back. She’s not sure exactly when, but she woke up too early one morning and instantly looked outside. For a moment, she didn’t see it - assuming it had gone. But curiosity got the better of her, and she went to the bedroom that faced the tree - below her office.
Pulling the window wide open, the light from the lamp behind her shone into the tree, and sure enough, it was there. The light should’ve startled it, but instead, it looked comfortable. She began to wonder if the tree was keeping it safe on purpose. But then, was that its job? Keeping the tiny bird safe and happy? Protected and cared for? Maybe the tree was stupid, too.
Yes. She supposed it was the job of the tree today. Still, the noise was unbearable.
Later in the morning, the tiny heart-chested bird started to pipe up, and the trill travelled through her headphones and landed in her ear. It felt like a worm wriggling around in there, sliding its way into her brain.
It didn’t take more than a second for her to traipse down the stairs, open the front door, and throw rocks at it. She has always had a great aim and assumed it would quickly move to a different tree.
After throwing a small pebble, she realised she would need something bigger.
This time, she found a rock and launched it at the bird, but it missed and made a dent in the tree trunk and, on the way down, took with it several new branches and a lot of leaves.
Still, the bird was there, making a noise - quieter now, though, but still there. She grabbed a larger rock from the floor and, with full force, threw it. This time, it scuffed the bird slightly but once again left a dent in the trunk and ravaged new growth on the way down.
After a few more fruitless attempts, she went back inside. Headed to the middle window again and pulled it wide. She noticed that her efforts to remove the bird from the tree had taken some damage - and perhaps more importantly, some of the branches had landed conveniently in front of the bird. Protecting it more than before.
She’d need a better plan.
After some contemplation over the following days and being tormented by the gentle tweeting of the harmless bird, she decided that the best thing to do was to remove more branches. Throwing the rocks and watching the leaves fall wasn’t comfortable, but it did pave the way for more drastic measures.
She loved to look at the tree swaying in the wind and how the sun shone through its leaves, but the robin ruined it. As far as she was concerned, there were better birds to sit in the tree.
After calling several tree surgeons and getting refused countless times, she decided that this was one thing she could handle herself. All she needed to do was remove several of the lower branches where the little bird often sat. Once the lower leaves were gone, the little bird would have to go elsewhere.
It would be a shame, though; the lower branches had a softness about them. The leaves were broader and more welcoming. They were greener than some of the top leaves and looked plumper, too. For the sake of her sanity, though, the lower branches would need to go.
There was no easy way to do this, and pulling an electric lopper out would be too noisy. So, she quietly tore away at the lower branches each evening for the following two weeks. In the process, she got splinters, blisters and bruises. The tree looked hacked and sad. It seems that neither of them was going to come out of this unscathed.
She noticed, though, that every time she took a lower branch away, the tree looked a little less bright, a little less shiny, and those soft-looking leaves had vanished. Leaving behind dry, splintered and sharp stubs where the big branches once were.
After removing another branch every night, she stuffed them away in the bin for garden waste. The once green shiny leaves turned brown and crisp in the bin, and while it gave her pause for thought, she was solid in her convictions.
For a few days, there was rain, and nothing but the patter of raindrops hitting the window could be heard. Grasping her coffee, she stared out the window and, for the first time, wondered - was she doing the right thing?
The tree didn’t look as bright and luscious as it had before.
The trunk was getting battered from the rain and the wind, and the white fleshy insides looked disgusting.
Finally, the rain stopped, and she heard the beautiful sounds of the rest of the birds chirping, singing and playing in the trees nearby. She settled down to her work, and suddenly. Cutting straight through her concentration, the twittering chirp of the little red-chested bird ruined her morning immediately.
She stared out the window at the butchered tree and wondered what else she could do. With each of the branches that got removed, the bird flew higher and higher into the top branches.
Regardless of the damage it had sustained, the tree kept the bird safe.
With an intense rage, she slapped the pile of books off the window ledge - they clattered around the room. Before long, she found herself googling how to kill a robin and discourage them from being in your garden…
She realised that the problem could be with the tree. Throwing rocks at it hadn’t worked, cutting off the softest branches hadn’t worked… What else? There had to be something.
After some consideration, she encountered chemicals that could make the bird sick. Once they arrived, she carefully packaged the chemicals in fat balls and left them at the bottom of the tree. Watching over the next few hours, countless birds came and went, but the robin stayed still.
Over the following days, the rest of the birds started to fall to the ground.
It didn’t matter anymore; finishing what she started was the only thing that mattered.
She knew exactly what she needed to do.
In the very early hours of the morning, after weeks of harsh sun, she poured petrol on the roots of the tree and spread it up the trunk. Lighting a match, she threw it at the base of the tree, and within a few minutes, the flames started rising and licking the top branches; the blaze grew bigger and bigger. So big, in fact, she began to panic and ran to the other side of the road and down to the corner to watch from a distance.
What she hadn’t accounted for was that as she had carried the petrol canister through her house to the tree, a tiny crack in the bottom had let just enough out to make a perfect little line. The fire zipped across the top of the petrol, and before she knew it, her house was on fire.
She could only watch as the soft, gentle tree burned and cracked slowly while her house burned at high speed. The flames lit up the street, casting dancing shadows on the ground.
The fire engines came, and the hoses began to batter the house and the tree; the stench of burning plastic and rubber was painful, but it was short-lived. Once the house and the tree were sopping wet, having lost everything she once had, she sat at the base of the charred tree.
She heard the tiny chirping of the robin and noticed it was above her. It was on top of the branch and weighed nothing at all. Soon after the fires were out, the weather turned, and it began to rain heavily.
Sitting, jeans soaking, jumper wet - in the only things she still owned, she looked up and saw one of the few remaining branches was doing its best to shelter only her from the fat raindrops.
She was wet but far from seeing the worst of the heavy rain, but the robin got sopping, so drenched, in fact, it flew across the street and down several houses to a different tree for shelter - because the little bird didn’t really care what tree it was in - and it never had.
Looking at her hollowed-out house and the tree she so cherished, she stared at it until the early hours of the morning. And right on cue, the bird began to sing.
Thoughts:
Note: metaphoric.
Sometimes little things are really fucking annoying, but because they annoy you, you focus so much on them - you lose track of the bigger picture. In this case, a little bird was a big bother - but in reality, it was just a bird, and some earplugs would’ve done the trick.
When we start to focus on things like this, it is very easy to take our eyes off what really matters. She loved the tree, but she lost that too in her haste to get rid of the bird. I think it can be applied to many things in life.
It's like picking a scab until the scar is much bigger than the cut ever was.
And, I wonder to myself how often it becomes easier to focus on the smaller, the insignificant stuff that, in the long and short of it - makes no difference.
Perhaps more importantly, to accept that something can upset your balance but really requires no action. Sometimes, it is the time to do nothing.
In the words of Talking Heads, “Watch out, you might get what you’re after.” In this case, the robin is gone, but the tree is FUBAR, and so is her house - and back to the title of the posts - Sometimes, you need to let it go.
I actually wrote this around the end of June / early July; it has taken me a while to come back around to it.
Listening to:
A fitting track this week.
It was almost Lana Del Rey, a track off the Ultraviolence album. But I changed my mind at the last minute.
Reading:
I decided to dip back into A Woman's Prison Journal: Germany 1944, reading it in short stints cause I like to think about it afterwards.
Landscape with Rowers is one I have had for a while, but coming back to it now, I have a better grasp on reading Dutch. It has the English translations in it, but there is a gap in the vocabulary.
And my library books are almost up (sad), so I have a list that I want to buy/borrow:
Anne Sexton - 100 Selected Poems: I mentioned Anne in a previous newsletter, I think. I need more anyway, and the local library has a single Anne Sexton book, so hopefully, no one else borrows it before I get there. Stoner - John Williams is one to buy. I read Butcher’s Crossing a while ago; got it from a book Lucky Dip, and it was brilliant. And finally, on my list is Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi; I love the idea, and I am pretty sure that we would all take a shot at meeting someone one last time.
Update just before publishing: old library books returned, and the new ones are The List & Het bos, vier vragen, het leven en ik (The forest, four questions, life and me). The local library didn’t have Anne, so I needed to go to the big one in the city. Boo.
Other stuff:
A glorious coffee in my fave spot in the world - which also happens to have outstanding coffee beans, washed down after foraging for hazelnuts and finding some wild beasties. What a morning.
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That’s it for another week, and I have a couple of drafts that I have changed the order of. So, I might post an extra later today (but not as an email blast) because I don’t like having that many drafts. Anyway, thanks for the reading and whatnot!
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fun story, great drawing of the tree and thank you for the 'September Song'.