The Olive Tree
Those cold times outside of the summer months, a gym can be saddled by, what feels like, a permanently stale atmosphere of drudgery.
“I’m knackered mate to be honest”
“Just getting it done, that’s the main thing”
“Better than nothing”
Such utterances are commonplace, and they enter circulation like a virus. These words are not dishonest; the tell is that faces align. Emerging wrinkles, loss of colour, the bags under the eyes filling up.
That way of being is quickly forgotten when summer comes, even in that air-controlled, perpetually white-lit, musically monotonous building, younger, fresher faces appear for 6 weeks.
In a routine eye wander between sets, I saw a young man sitting inside the frame of an iron machine. He must have been there for some time. His hair was a kind of messy blonde, surferish without any evidence of effort to make it that way. His face lightly tanned with an even complexion. How could someone of a striking disposition on paper fly under the radar?
His fingers reached for the handle overhead in a struggle to create a hook, and the forearm readied itself. Taut cables of tendons came subtly forth near the elbow, and softened into a more delicate, hidden form at the hand. The work was about to travel through the forearm, but it could not be witnessed. The head tilted, the legs squirmed, the core braced. Everything gave to the drive apart from the forearm, through which all the energy of the movement travelled outwards, and which itself was unchanged.
In Antakya in 2026, there isn’t much greenery. Exposed AC units, ventilators, satellite dishes, balconies with washing hung out to dry, they grow here and there amongst the sandy white and earthy red topped buildings. Closer to the airport, fresh apartment blocks are springing up. They look sturdy and are also easy on the eye when contrasted with the buildings on the hillside, which are a little more cramped, corrugated iron roofs, breezeblocks, black plastic water tanks on roofs; everything is a bit rougher round the edges. Then there are still the container towns, situated beside the main road as you go out towards the Syrian border.
Things are a little more sparse outside of Antakya, towards the North of the city. Olive trees begin to appear. They know their place. On the outskirts, the back end of business that goes on in warehouses and moves in the backs of lorries and comes off ships, is the major thing. Walls of brick factories and unknown premises are lined by young olive trees.
Go eastwards from the city beyond the smaller, less active industrial units & peer through rickety metal fencegates into a garden of a rural Hatay home and you will sometimes see a few olive trees sitting comfortably on top of professional looking soil. Withheld, gathering charge quietly in the shade. “It is good to have.”
Up close, the trunk is barely a unified thing. It’s more of a free assembly of supple skin-covered tendons, with each tendon winding upwards all in a moment of converging will. The twist in the tendons of the trunk become cords laid down at different speeds around the same axis.
No branch is subordinate, and the tension of each of the branches reaching out as the charge grows puts the torso into an ever more exaggerated contrapposto. Serrati of whippy new branches bolt out of the initial toiled branches.
