A few months ago, I came home from a hard day of work. Longing for the couch, I went up the stairs to the livingroom. Once there, the room seemed strangely bright. Now, I do have a bright room, having 3 windows at both sides, but this time the light seemed brighter, more intense. I looked around. Was there a lamp on? No. Was it the fatigue which played trics on me? I looked at the windows on the side where the garden is, ran to the window, openend it, and threw, from my tones, a scream into the hood.
My little citygarden borders the one of the neighbours across from us. The distance between our houses will be, approximately, 7 meters. In the garden of those neighbours stood a big, proud weeping willow, which raised her peak to my roof. My bedroom, on the topfloor, was sheltered by the jungle of leaves of this old tree. I used to wake up with the wispering of the wind through the leaves and, at night, that sound oozed me to sleep, as a lullaby.
Now, you would never find me, on a walk in the woods, in deep conversation with a tree. However, one time I amazed myself, looking from my bedroomwindow at the rain of leaves at an early awakening, to speak the following words: 'We will survive, won't we, gal'. Startled my hand covered my mouth. Had it come this far that I started talking to myself? But the words were aimed at the tree. Apparently I now was a panpsychist, I souled the tree. For me, that tree stood for perseferance.
You may have noticed, I'm writing in the past tense. The tree is gone, cut down, sawn into pieces, dead.
I stood there at my window, flabbergasted, staring at the space it left behind. I looked straight into the appartment of the opposite neighbours. At those of all the neighbours. And they looked directly into mine. Gloomily I closed the window with the feeling of having lost a close friend. A brute murder had been performed in the backyard. The meaning that the tree had had for me hit me like a mean slash in my face. It didn't seem to disturb the other opposite neighbours, they were standing on their balcony, looking into my room. I looked back, 'Nice and bright, huh?' they called out, happely nodding, to me. 'Yes, and nicely transparent!' I grumbled morosely. These neighbours moved, by the way, one week later. That's why they were so cheerful. They weren't the ones left behind with an unsolicited open house.
Why had those tree-owners cut the healthy willow? They didn't live in the house themselves, they moved to the pampas and rented out the appartment, now they tried to sell the house. Probably, one sleek broker told them that the house would be sold more easely if they took away the lightconsuming tree. I can't imagine anything else. They could have topped the tree, if they were afraid it might fall down, as another neighbour had done, that tree is still there.
A half year later, the house still isn't sold. There are new tenants. Ones who never, really never, close their curtains. Typical Dutch, you might think, one has to show off ones stuff! And so, I'm flaunting, unwillingly, my life. In the meantime I bestowed a whole background on these two people. They must have money, both are in their twenties, and the rent is - as another neighbour told me - high. Looking at their furniture, design and not the Ikea sorts, they must be into graphical design. Although she doesn't look like a very designy person with her Barbieponytail. He does wear fashionable glasses, however. The guests they entertain are of a particular sort. Once I saw one cooking only wearing a white apron. Nothing more. I hope he put something more on during eating, but I didn't dare to look at that.
That I, so shamelessly, fill in their lives, I do without a trace of bother. They are the once flinging their world at me. In doing that, they can expect me to make a good job of it! They've become the equivalent of the puppet-shows of my youth. And this time, I'm the puppeteer. One of these days, I going to attach something very designery & artistic at my windows. To stop their filling in of our little world.
Enough = enough!
At nights, when I lay in bed, I can hear the rustling of the leaves from the trees in the park.
And I feel a flaw, deep inside, she is not here, she is gone.
