A Tree Falls in Seoul

Workers, loading the last of the fallen tree onto their truck.

The view from my bedroom window- as is the case with many a bedroom window in a densely populated city such as Seoul -is far from spectacular. What I can see immediately beyond the always dusty safety bars and the mosquito net is the entrance to the building next door and just a few feet away a section of the narrow steep road leading up to the campus entrance.

The other side of the street is framed in low houses, closely pressed against one another. The entrance doors to these dwellings, with their chipped paint and remnants of ancient scotch tape, are forever adorned with flapping flyers.

Above the low houses, on the slope of the nearby hill, like an unattractive threadbare tapestry randomly discarded by a festidious heavenly char, streches a mass of uncared for homes, their flat rooftops littered by brown kimchi pots, huge bright yellow water tanks, slanting chimneys wrapped in tin-foil, bright patches of chilis drying in the sun, some herb pots, and clothes swaying on the clothes lines.
When I look out of my bedroom window, (and even more so out of my office window) it's easy to forget the bright lights of Gangnam and the cosmopolitan feel of Itaewon. The exotic quality of my neighbourhood never ceases to surprise me.
I don't mind it, really. I am happy with my neighbourhood. I feel that I am in a different world, which, I suppose, is the whole point of being in a different world. However, I am very happy that I can walk to Daehangno in less than 1/2 hour and, on rare occasions when I'm brave enough to tackle the city's fumes and noise, I venture - on foot, of course - all the way to Jongno and Insa-dong in less than an hour.
As used as I am to seeing nothing more than bricks and concrete around me, I concede to experiencing more than just a tiny jolt of joy upon seeing the thick canopy of leaves generously provided by a tree that grew right outside my window. It wasn't an old tree. If I put my hands around its trunk my fingertips would almost meet. But, it was a tall tree, growing up past my rooftop, and it was very healhty. Its beautiful thick dark green leaves shone in the sunglight, rustled in the wind,and danced in the rain.

I loved that tree. It casted beatuiful shadows on my ribbed curtains and made them appear less ugly. A few months ago I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom so that my head would lie in the spot from which I could gaze at the tree. Sometimes, I managed to fool myself - if only for a fraction of a moment - into waking up somewhere in the country.

Notice the past tense? As of this morning, sadly, the tree doesn't exist. It was killed, execution style, quickly and efficiently. A couple of the uni's employees mutilated it, methodically cutting off small branches first, than the thicker limbs, and finally delivering the final kick (literally) to its bare trunk.

Although I was in my apartment when it happened, I couldn't do anything about it. At first I didn't realise what was going in. I could hear some ajoshis speaking loudly right ouside my window. That, however, is nothing unusual. Campus groundskeepers and cleaners loved that tree and the deep shadey spot it provided. They always sat there smoking, drinking coffee and gossiping.

I was reading an article about the riots in Hungary, when I became aware of the chainsaw noise outside. I ran out, and sure enough, the workers were cutting the outer branches. Immediately, I felt protective about the tree, wanted to yell, but checked myself, thinking they were somehow preparing it for the winter. I could not have guessed in million years that in about 1/2 hour the tree will have been killed.

I went back to reading about the riots, while the chainsaw noise persisted. I still thought it'd be o.k. After a while, I got tired of all the bad news in the world and decided I had enough of reading the paper. Still hearing the noise outside the bedroom window, I went to my bedroom, moved the curtain to the side... What I saw shocked me: the ground around the tree -that actually now was just a sad branchless and limbless pole - was thickly carpeted in beautiful shiny leaves. One worker was precariously balancing on some kind of makeshift scaffold, sea-sawing the upper part of the miserable pole. Two others were gathering the branches and leaves onto a bigger pile in the middle.

Seeing them so maddeningly emotionless, focused on the task at hand, I grew livid and I really hated them. Their egerness to finish the job as quickly as possible, to remove the last trace of once living thing was too much to observe. Childish, of course, - they were after all just workers executing somone else's orders - but I couldn't help it.

I loved that tree, and -as is often the case with many other things in life - I didn't even know how much before I lost it to a random, ill-conceived and poorly thought-through decision of some "landscape planning" ajoshi guy from my uni. Come to think of it, the tree, whose name I had never bothered to learn, was my silent friend, the only saving grace in the disarray and ugliness beyond my bedroom, my quick picker-upper in those down times.

Just a couple of weeks ago, during the last heavy rain of the season, I spent hours sitting on my bed, reading a book, and every once in a while looking at the tree and the web of silvery haze that the rain spun around it. Seeming perfectly happy with the wet lashing, almost dancing and bouncing under the heavy drops, it also cheered me up.

To think that from now on, the only thing I'd see when I look out of my bedroom window is the gaping entrance to the building on the right and the bare wall of the building to the left... Why? Why would they cut it? Was it to much for maintenance workers to sweep the leaves every day? I noticed that the authorities in Seoul (or perhaps all of Korea) can't stand the sight of fallen leaves on the ground. They sweep them daily, hourly almost. Last year, after some residents insisted that the leaves should be left on the ground for people to enjoy the sweet scent of autumn more intensely, the city fathers promised not to sweep them as soon as they fall, but I don't think that decision has reached my place of employment yet. If I had known what's to become of my friend, I would have offered to sweep myself, every minute, if necessary.

After the workers finished loading the last fallen leaf onto their truck and after they had taken it to god knows which filthy graveyard, I collapsed on my bed, felled like the tree by an immense sense of loss and sadness.

I will have to rearrange my furniture again. Without the tree, I don't want to look out the window anymore. One thing is for sure: there are no tree huggers among the Big Wigs at my uni.