The tree’s ambition

A tree with the deep ambition of becoming an ant: long evenings in night school, first attempts at rapid movement, countless resits of Thinking like a team(Business Studies 5071).

One day the tree realises: becoming an ant requires the perfection of smallness. The tree would start by concentrating its being in a single leaf, a dry leaf, preferably, scored with old wounds. Next it would work on narrowing its life span, ideally to no more than a few intense hours.

 The tree thinks: living like an ant means living inside death – so much industry, endless conferences on collaboration, decisions taken in micro-seconds. Death as a name for a species, a destiny.

 Here, inside its bark, watching a tribe of ants, unable to join their purposive non-stop rush hour. The sadness of being a tree. Its branches fall back around it like a song of defeat. “Farewell boys, comrades of my dreams, I must sleep with my silence. Always trying to mouth the one green syllable, condemned to the dunce’s chair. Me and my eternal shadow. My inability to organize a planet.”