A Hundred Years in the Shadow. There is more than just metal left in the trees. The past is trapped in its bark. Here—staples, nails, pins, tacks. Here—traces of hands that once posted notices about lost dogs, furniture discounts, apartment swaps, searches for love, and neighborhood meetings. Here—even remnants of a time when war spoke through German orders, nailed to this very trunk. The pins have grown into the bark. Some have vanished beneath mold, some have fused with moss, some still cut fingers with their rusted sharpness. These are not just remnants. These are wounds of memory. And this is how the tree remembers more than we do. Because what is memory, if not the remnants of someone’s touch? If not the traces of a presence that has already disappeared? Once, something terrible hung here. Once, this was just a blank space—a void waiting for new meaning, a new purpose. But memory does not fade, even when words disappear. It carves itself into matter, it takes root, like the metal pins that have become part of the trunk. And perhaps this tree no longer even feels their pain. Perhaps it has learned to be both wounded and whole at the same time. What should be done with this memory? Rip it out, leave it, or simply accept that it exists? The tree does not cry out or speak. It simply stands. Stitched together by pins, bound by staples, sewn into time that has never disappeared. But if you listen closely—you can hear the faint whisper of rust. You can hear how the metal deep within the bark turns into shadow. How, in the darkness between the tree’s fibers, the imprints of hands that once touched it can still be felt. The people who left their marks here. Sometimes absurd, sometimes life-altering. And perhaps, in this, we find our answer. Not to erase memory. Not to tear it out or uproot it. But to learn to live as this tree does—to carry time within us, without resisting it. To stand, even when everything around us changes. To stand, even when no one remembers why.