A fable based on a fable.
When I was a boy, there was a forest on the edge of my suburb in the far west of Geelong – a young forest, just like me, with baby trees that had sprung up after a bushfire. Life was confusing for little me; I felt out of step with the other kids in my primary school. I liked taking long walks at lunchtime and sneaking into the cemetery next to the school. I liked laying on the trampoline and making animals in the clouds. I liked cooking curries, collecting fossilised shark teeth from the local quarry and painting sticks. I liked wearing a polka dot tie and roller skates to school. I got teased for my idiosyncratic ways, a bit of lightweight bullying, but I was ok. Mum often reminded me, “To thine own self be true”.
As I waded into the swamp of my teenage years, I’d go for weekly jogs through the forest, witnessing a swathe of trees reaching proudly into the sky – elegant, straight Eucalyptus Regnans, known as Victorian Ash trees, favoured by builders for their solid and valuable timber. It was becoming clear that one of the trees was no Ash tree – it hid in their shadows, twisting and turning its branches in a discordant symphony of photosynthesis. I befriended this crooked tree, calling out to it each time I jogged past – “What will become of us two misfits?” I pondered as I ran.
High school ended, and my adult life began with a move up the highway to the big smoke of Melbourne. Before University started, I got a job cleaning at St. Vincent’s Hospital, the quiet night shifts giving me time to devour a potted history of classical and modern literature. During these Uni years, I would regularly visit my hometown to raid Mum’s fridge and dump my laundry with the blind entitlement of many a young man. My visits back to the forest left me reeling with the changes that were happening – builders with logging permits had started to pick through the forest, cutting down the straightest trees. Firstly, the carpenters chose the tallest Vic Ash’s to be the frame timber for new homes in Geelong’s ever-expanding suburban sprawl. Boat builders soon followed, the hulls of yachts, catamarans and row boats crafted from the straight trees suited to steam bending (rather than being naturally bent like my crooked tree friend).
The forest was thinning, and the crooked tree was even more ostensible than ever. I felt sad for it – the other trees were finding their purposes in this world – they had things to be, reasons to exist. By the end of my second year at Uni, the last of the straight trees had been plucked out by a crew of furniture makers – for chairs and tables and other designer delights. The crooked tree was left alone – looking stranger and more crooked than ever. During this time, I embraced the clash of 1980s subcultures with a hybrid goth punk hippie look – mohawk, trenchcoat, paisley shirt, a dangly earring and thick black eyeliner. I was also a crooked tree in a suburban forest of flannos, moccasins and mullets. In the evenings, I could walk around the neighbourhood and see my old mates tinkering with their panel vans, installing plush carpets and stereo systems, and buffering the painted images of warrior women holding spears, rising moons with silhouetted howling wolves, and large SANDMAN decals emblazoned on the side panels. Their 6-cylinder chariots were ready for a hero’s journey through these western badlands.
A few months after the forest had been completely cleared from around the crooked tree, I noticed something interesting. A few kids were lying in its shade after a swim in the river. Later that day, a couple of teenagers stood under the tree – carving their names in the tree. I heard one of them yell to their friend as they rode a BMX back home – “Let’s hang here with everyone on Friday after school”. On my next visit, I noticed two people picnicking – a love heart was freshly carved on the tree. A story of the suburb and the people was forming on the tree trunk like a heliographic tale.
That year, the crooked tree became a popular meeting place – I had started seeing family BBQs, teen parties, and weddings. After all this time, the crooked tree had finally found its purpose – not to be a chair or a boat –but to be a gathering place, a place of shade, the keeper of stories and a place to begin new stories.
My last year at Uni was ending, and it was time for me to be like the crooked tree and find my reasons for existing. The clues were in how my branches twisted: I wanted to be a shady place for people, too, a place of stories. The crooked tree inside me whispered, “You are a writer – write and write and write and grow stranger and more beautiful with every page”. And that is what I did. And that is what we do here at Crooked Trees. Enjoy our forest of words.
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