My Real Story Is Not a Real Story

Last night I sat on the front porch and watched the day fade until the magnolia leaves were outlined against the sky with perfect clarity. It's a saucer magnolia. Very cool, slightly oblong leaves with that succinctly hooked point. The magnolia is always reminding you that while it is not a large tree it is a three-dimensional tree. Maybe this is the secret of its survival. No matter how far you walk away or go up on tiptoes to see a leaf from the side. The fleshy leaves hold themselves scooped and curved along the spine; the whole growth habit of the thing is unruly. Even from a quarter mile away you see rebellious runners and odd splashes of white. The magnolia is also a terrible planner: it blooms too early. I actually couldn't write about this while it was blooming because the whole thing makes me nervous. I was afraid to jinx it by pointing out that once again it (she? he?) was completely covered in these dirty-white blossoms maybe three weeks too early, maybe three weeks before the last frost date. And way too profusely: what's the point, magnolia? Half that many blossoms, properly white, would overwhelm even the most indifferent shit-gazing or cellphone-bound dogwalker. So many blossoms that the tree seems in danger of capsizing, and flung violently into bloom on those odd little shoots that are themselves flung two feet beyond what the architect intended or the engineer approved. The blossoms wait much longer than you would think to fully bloom. In this pose that suggests some extreme sport for hand models and glove factory inspectors. They stay that way for two weeks, collecting dust and snow and blemishes before they have even bloomed. As I write this I am dismayed again at the profligacy of the whole thing. As if a troupe of acrobats walked for miles into a forest, found a single ancient beer can and concluded that they must walk much further. And only upon finding the point equidistant from aesthetisizing eyes in all directions does one of them step up on a fallen magnolia twig, and the others climb silently over eachothers' shoulders into an organic, unnameable shape. And the last one finds a place on the outermost branch of the pelleton, where viewed from the ground against the gentle swaying of the rest of the troupe, he looks to be falling, or maybe about to drift upwards, but is actually holding perfectly still.