This was the second time I landed in NYC in the weeks following Christmas. No matter where you go in the city, uptown, downtown, east, west, Brooklyn, Manhattan, on every street there are the carcass's of people's Christmas trees. I am utterly fascinated by it. This is the second time I've tried to do a little
photo tribute to these discarded trees whose job has come and gone. I don't think it will ever stop being interesting to me. It probably speaks to the bigger picture of why I am so mesmerized by this city. It is just such a different way of life, from the transportation to the grocery shopping, from walking your dog to the home you live in, from the food to the way you trash your Christmas tree. Living in New York City is subways and bodegas, it's dog parks and apartments, it's every food at any hour of the day. And in January it is piles upon piles of green trees on every block, in front of restaurants, brownstones, and the most couture shops in the city.
And I love it.
It makes me sad and happy.
I love imagining every one of those trees lit, tinseled, and ornamented in the tiniest apartment in the city and in the fanciest store on Park Avenue.
Some of these trees balsam beauties still smell so strong of pine...it makes me wonder why it's people didn't decide to leave it up for just a day or two longer. I always have such a hard time taking down my tree..Every single year I somehow manage to get emotionally attached to our tree. It's like the couch my grandmother sold when I was five years old. I bawled as I watched the men carry it out of the house. I only regained my composure when my Nana brought be all the change that had been discovered in the cushions. Or the time I sold my car and then regretted it and went as laid across the hood, crying...in the dealership lot. I have a history of attachment to inanimate objects.
Seeing these trees is something I oddly look forward to when I'm in the city in January.
Even though it's a sad kind of beauty,
it's still beauty.
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