maple trees: two

maple flaring

I’ve not been a fan of maple trees.

How can anyone confess such a thing?!

But their shapes, so easy to identify, seem too easy; they seem like the Sears brand of tree, kind of generic, servicable, ubuitous. The five fingers of their leaves so much like hands, waving around saying “we’re a metaphor! use us!”

I promise, this isn’t a kind of snobbery-induced distaste, though – the Sears/Walmart aesthetic repulses and frightens me – particle board bookshelves terrify -

My parents – oh children of the sixties – stored their heavy books with the adaptable-modular ‘bricks and board’ method – but at least they were real, raw materials -

I don’t mind, in fact I relish, fakeness and pretense when they are self-aware – acknowleding theselves – owning up to their superficiality by making it concretely excessive – drag queens, for instance – taking real to the limit -

When a bookshelf is faked to look ‘real’ with no admitting of the pretense, it degrades the ‘real’ object it is mean to simulate or evoke because it implies that the ‘real’ can be imitated/faked and therefore is, itself, superficial – fakeable – without a substantial value – a stripping of integrity – disconcerting on several levels -

It’s like when I worked at Peebles my senior year in high school, having to dust the “furniture” of the men’s department where I worked – the hollow desks and wardrobes, meant to look expensive, rich, but really just set pieces – if they had lived on a real theater stage, they would have worked – but providing atmosphere to pants and sportcoats cheapened the store and the world they were meant to evoke -

Oh, it’s all so silly. And so is my annoyance toward maple trees.