Genteel Readers;
I sit here now, pondering precisely why western culture finds it even mildly appropriate to celebrate the death of a beautiful evergreen tree by conspicuously suspending it in the living room, placing celebratory decorations on it's corpse, and the piling presents underneath it for children to open on Christmas morning. If you ask me, it is a manipulative and mendacious campaign by the logging industry to make children associate their ongoing arbicidal holocaust with material wealth, which in a way I suppose is appropriate. But in another, more accurate way it is revoltingly beneath contempt to even consider killing nature's oldest, wisest, and most intelligent being, the lovely tree, simply to produce McMansions and toothpicks and furniture. Self-worth cannot be purchased at the market, it must be developed slowly and steadfastly by the ancient art of reading and writing books which perhaps surprisingly and certainly unprofitably involves no murder whatsoever. Ponder this during your meditations, I challenge you!
But I did not write this post to chastise, but to share a story about one of the little people, my neighbor Dan. Dan (as I may have previously mentioned,) is one of the little people. But by observing him through mostly closed blinds and other covert means, I have found a thing or two about him that an enlightened like myself can admire. For example, he is clever with his hands. I notice he once took a sliding shower door I had discarded and re-appropriated into a window for his shed. Delightful recycling! But I do wish he would ask before rummaging through my garbage. Another thing I admire is his adherence to his convictions. Oftentimes during our brief conversations he lets slip a curse word, and I quickly remind him that such utterances are countermanded by his religion (he regularly attends Sunday services at a local Christian place of worship.) He then rolls his eyes at his own personal failing and walks away, no doubt to make meaningless ritual amends to the powerful God he fears rules us all.
It is once such brief conversation, relating to the death of trees that brings me to this purpose of this blog post. I was watching his yard for inspirational literature-worthy activity such as rigging up a trailer or doing some manner of hammer or wrench-work, as Dan is wont to do. He came puttering down his driveway in his rustic, rusty, pick-em-up truck and the color drained from my face in horror when I saw the decaying, tinsel strewn corpse of a Douglas fir in the trunk. I immediately ran outside to confront and correct this wayward rube, and on the way slipped on a pair of Ricardo's dirty leopard print boxer-briefs, which put me in a foul mood.
As I stomped outside huffing and puffing, Dan was ghoulishly dragging the tree's remains out of the trunk of his pick-em-up truck, aided by two frightening bikers.
"Dan!" I shouted authoritatively. "Daniel, step away from that body and come speak with me this instant!" His biker buddies smirked and leaned against the pick-em-up truck as Dan walked towards our mutual fence. "What can I do ya for?" he asked cheerily. The poor rube. He hadn't the slightest notion he was doing anything at all immoral. Smiling to acknowledge his stupid greeting pun, I explained I wanted to discuss his choice of Yuletide decor with him. He just looked puzzled, so I simply said "The tree, Dan. I want to discuss the moral aspects of murdering that tree with you."
He paused briefly, then started laughing that kind of "hyuk hyuk hyuk" laugh and slapping his knee that lower-class people do when they're ashamed. The bikers started doing it as well. I am always so fascinated by how contagious a sense of conscience is. Once they had completed their catharsis, I went on to explain that the tree is a living organism and not a variety of mineral as I am certain he had assumed. At one point, Dan actually called his biker chums over to better hear what I had to say regarding the sanctity of nature and the wisdom of trees. Quite often, I would say something that sparked hoots of cathartic conscience from these three rubes. The suggestion that I aid them in composing a requiem sonnet for the tree they had murdered elicited a particularly intense round of guilt-laden laughter.
Once they got up off the ground, Dan clasped my hand (which rather hurt, I must say,) and exclaimed in a gruff voice "Mister, you're all-right!" as the bikers got on their bikes and started whooping and pedaling down the driveway. The tree remains in the trunk of the pick-em-up truck, and I suspect Dan is making proper arrangements for the care and disposal of the body, though I do wish he would wrap it in a blanket of some sort to protect it's dignity and to alleviate the anxiety of of other trees in his yard. I can't imagine how this must unsettle them, but I can almost hear them discussing it as the January wind whistles through them whilst I lay on my couch at night.
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