A lone tree sits in front of our apartment complex having sprung from the concrete waving defiant branches in the face of all the development.  On summer days there are green leaves covering this survivor–masking our third floor window, protecting our kitchen from prowling eyes and rogue dust storms.  In winter our tree loses its modesty and foliage, trims down for frosty days and gives the horizon room to spread as the mountains loom.  I’ve looked out on this tree many times and empathized with its forced solitude.  I am glad it is here, too, especially when I’d like to be somewhere else.  When I pass the tree on ground level I often stretch out my hand and touch the soft bark for a moment to make sure we are both real and living.

As much as I feel a sense of shared comraderie with this piece of lumber I often would wish for the tree’s release from its suffering.  Maybe on a cool autumn day, before the weather turns and nips into winter I’ll go to a hardware store and purchase an axe.

Then I’ll come back to the tree out front, hold a short eulogy service, explain this important event to our Tibetan neighbors and then start swinging.  Tears will well up in my eyes as the sweat stains the pits of my shirt.  Each swing will end in a blocky-sounding chunk as the metal axe-head eats through my old friend.  When enough of the trunk has disappeared like a jack-o’-lantern face materializing on a pumpkin, the tree will lean and totter–groaning its last wooden sigh.  The Fall will be the best–the THUD, the ground shaking, the storied apartments applauding with echoes, the mountains looking on in surprise, the Chinese faces full of vacant curiosity and thoughts of the peculiar habits of foreign white devils.

But there will be an emptiness, too, a stump-void where once there was an old familiar, an accomplice; now there is the nothingness of being released.  The place, once occupied and in full view is now left empty and even in a small victory comes a sad sense of defeat.

At least that is what I think would happen if such axes were for sale in China.