I was cleaning up my hard drive before work this morning and discovered something that I wrote, inexplicably, about four years ago, before I started this web log. Dated April 9, 2002, it is the only entry in a file called “Journal.” The gods only know what I was thinking, but given the date, I do know that I was living in Jackson Heights at the time, and I was most likely not intoxicated on anything.

I am a tree that will be a wooden heart. The heart is smooth, ridged wood that has been worn smooth by water in the distant past. In the top is a golden orange key that has already been turned. The heart is unlocked for anyone who would care to open it. Remove the key, and it swings open, revealing darkness and the fleeting flash of color, the image of a 14th century painting, people in vivid robes carrying gold and riches. The image is gone and there is hollowness, not aching but sad and quiet.

I am the tree from before the heart. I stand alone on a small hill but surrounded by other trees. The forest is around me, but I'm not in it. My roots extend down into it, but that is all. Behind the other trees is water I can see. The sunlight flashes off of it, but it doesn't hurt my eyes because it hits the other trees first. It is late afternoon on a still summer's day.

I stand on the hill, silent and alone. My roots are thick and extend in all directions, but not beyond the hill. They have the slow business of bringing in nutrients, and there are a lot of them, but it's like sucking ice cream through a straw. They won't come in. My sap is old and tired, thick and gummy, it does not flow, or at a glacial pace at the most. It does not reach the outer branches or the leaves, which whirl around me but will never fall off. They have told me that they are jealous of the air, which does as it pleases. Today, the air is still and sparkly. My leaves want to fall up, to be free, but we are so rooted. We don't remember what it's like, we only remember that we don't remember.

Around me are happy trees, ignorant trees. They don't know what I know. I tried to tell them, but they talk about me behind their hands. They are younger. They don't have hills of their own yet. They will go their whole lives without building one. I will go my whole life regretting mine.