Thanks to Dave Bonta of Via Negativa for organizing a Festival of the Trees, of which this is a last-minute entry.
Visit me in Sydney, and I'll have many trees to show you, but we will start and end with Ficus macrophylla.
Look close, just to the right of trunk, and there's a park bench with human being for scale. The black and white thing in the foreground is a magpie, who is mumbling a long perfect-pitched twelve-tone commentary, like a random outtake from Schoenberg played on a recorder.
Foliage? Chipper.
Hard plasticlike leaves, brown and hairy underneath, all perked toward the sun. At moments, the tree resembles a thousand-strong flock of birds ready to take flight.
It's hot, though, so come in underneath. Everything's upside down here, so the vast buttresses seem to support the earth more than they do the tree. Here is a city of shade, with many secret chambers behind high walls.
There's room to think here, and just enough darkness that we can see.
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