Life goes on maybe
Well, it’s not maybe, actually. Life goes on, forget that lopsided tree. Doesn’t take being whacked over the head to forget, doesn’t take a lament, no melodrama here. It’s just a fucking tree, growing away from the looming concrete facade, reaching for piddling patches of sky, the wind on the blacktop river kicking around leaves and twigs and torn telltales. Bugs you, like the bugs swarming the daylight out of you.
But hey, life goes on, and so do you, lugging that life around in hopeful disbelief. It doesn’t matter what you think if you think if you can nanothink about a rhythm this infinitesimal, imperceptible, millennial. It’s all good as long as you can pick your poison (freedom of choice). Each day, rain or shine or raging windstorms, on your way from one concrete cell to another, digital hell or another, you bow your head under that tree or go around, stepping into traffic, your shallow breath mingling with toxic fumes.
Each day you wonder when the men with chainsaws will appear and here they are. They’re here to bring down that tree on account of it hanging over the sidewalk instead of rising into satellite turf (freedom of choice). On account of you people grumbling it bumped into you and poked you in the eye, and why the fuck it can’t be shook loose, yanked out like a sore tooth, and why the city’s sooo slow. Oh, you mumble, it wasn’t you that called. Safety first, they say, just doing their job. They gotta lop it off lest it crash on your head next blustery day, and if it don’t kill ya, your hospital bill surely will.
Sky swarming with drones ain’t their specialty. Mother nature and her disgruntled brood pose a far greater risk. They swear. We’ve been seeing vicious winds of all stripes vandalizing the infrastructure. Imagine you got foreclosed on and evicted and standing with all your belongings under such delinquent specimen just as the storm goes berserk, snaps it in half and throws the top on top of your head. Or imagine nothing (freedom of choice done right), just pick the right place across the terrain at the right time across millennia, fucking snotty sniveling right.
Right. This chatty crew is know-it-all about things falling on your head and laugh how you don’t see the forest for the single tree, certain in that (freedom of choice) kinda way that they got the last laugh. Go on, you freak, hug your ugly tree, say your goodbyes before we evict the birds nesting inside (it’s springtime, yay), scare away the squirrels; just yay. You don’t want to be around when we bring the damn thang down.
They’re the ones with the chainsaws, it doesn’t matter what you think if you think safety is just an excuse. They’ll cut down that tree because they can (freedom of choice), because they invested in chainsaws and are itching to use them (extra special freedom of choice). Because they like things neat and the way this scraggly thang encroaches on the sidewalk, well, duh, that’s not how a tree should grow. They point to its proud replacement, a straight-backed sapling, roots tucked inside a ball of burlap, on the bed of the landscaping truck. When this little one grows ugly we’ll replace it, too. Or, if the solar winds blow away the concrete tower behind it while it’s still young it could shoot straight for the sun.
For all their words, they won’t say how to teach an old tree new tricks… Like how to make a break for it, the way you would, like totally — rip out your nomadic roots, toss all your crap in a jumble on the back of the pickup and take off before the roads get all jammed up in the impossible evacuation of the concrete megalopolis. How ‘bout that? No? The tree shakes its canopy, roots digging deep, holding on tight. Lousy plan, worse execution, it whispers in your ear, sprinkling a few teardrops on your head. Or maybe it’s the demented wind pushing fog through its limbs, sweeping away all the oxygen and shade and property value the damn thang’s been gifting you. The meaning of life (freedom of choice) at your service. Air fresheners, too.
Oh, what the heck, it’s just a fucking tree, you can’t worry about no tree, no matter how long and hard it sobs, it’s got no bargaining power or anything. Just watch. Here goes, from the top down, limbs first, trunk second (we’ll leave the severed roots underground lest they bleed all over the concrete), ship it off to processing for planks and boards and sawdust. Next stop the shopping palace with its glittering displays of trinkets and doodads amid democratic loot of assault weapons and the gallows and bad breath, all beckoning you to come in with your head full of iffy words and (freedom of choice).
No worries about the brutal sun, there’s plenty shade where that came from, where glass and steel towers loom over smoldering concrete, where the sky darkens with swarming bugs. Hey, life goes on, even as you lug it away, leaving behind a convulsing terrain, whipped by the howling winds hauling their loot of dust and debris out to the rising seas. It doesn’t take being whacked over the head to forget. No rhythm either. It’s just pixels rising lopsided into the breathless air, specks of light dissipating in the infinitesimal, imperceptible, millennial lament.
A little melodrama can’t hurt.
