lulie & marie: 2011

Wednesday

all the trees standing in the city

every year right after thanksgiving hundreds of christmas tree vendors bring thousands of trees to the cities street corners. they drape fences with tiny bright lights and pile trees on top of one another. Piles of trees. Stacks of trees. Bundles of trees. Slowly singled out and selected one by one. Each tree to its own home. From the street you can see them all dressed up in living rooms, dining room, small studios, grand staircases. In the first of evening before the curtains have closed you can peak in windows and there they are blinking back at you in ribbons, lights, tinsel, glass globes, all sorts of seasonal ornaments. They live on first floors, second floors, third floors, twelfth floors, fiftieth floors, all the way to the tippy top. Still stacked somehow on top of one another. And then suddenly they return to the street, naked and dry. Great drifts of needles and branches. I'd like to see them all standing together in central park or even just down an avenue. I think they would make an impressive forrest, not very tall, but the density of it would be surprising. Somehow all those trees are absorbed into the city and then spit out again, year after year. If I start into that sort of imagining I begin to build mountains of toothbrushes, dunes of shoes, even a number of nests out of the rejected string. And what a bout the people, what if we all went to the park in our pajamas and let out one soft sigh? what if we sang a very quiet lullaby? what if we sent out one collective wish? The trees to me are one wonder of this city of every day wonders, small wonders, minor miracles. Miracles born out of the element of man. Some symbol of our everlasting hope for spring and spirit and the light to return. A forrest in the city in honor of spirit in dark places. They would make a most amazing blaze.