Where the Trees Go to Die

The killing of trees appears to be an important pastime here on Soybean Island.  Perhaps it is but sport, or maybe it is done out of a sense of duty, seeing how agriculture is (on the surface) the main occupation and money-maker on this island. Trees, no doubt, were an annoyance, something in the way of the plow and the growing of rutabagas. So, perhaps trees are still viewed in that manner. Or, perhaps, trees are killed off simply out boredom. They have killed off almost all other forms of prey (even human ones, I suspect) and therefore are now down to the trees.

Boredom is a common feeling here on the island--it is a point of pride, this boredom, it is a goal to be achieved (and it has been achieved mightily). Boredom rises every morning and stays risen every night of every day in every season, like a miasmic dome of torpor-sonambulistic-dull-pained atmosphere of which only The Apparatus and The Elite have measures to escape . . .

Anyway, the trees:

Dead ones. Many dead ones:

Dismembered and defiled and stacked up like so many corpses next to a tinny tiny cabin where no doubt the non-gravedigger lives:

Yes. On my many forced meandering pointless walks across what areas I have access to on the island, I have seen trees savagely cut or uprooted or lopped-of-limb. I have seen them chained and fenced and circled with metal bars. Yes.

It was very frightening for me to discover this place where huge old trees had been hauled to--in pieces, mind you--and left to rot or--and I hesitate to reveal this--to be ground up like so much pulpy sausage and used for who knows what!:

They even must suffer the ignominy of red plastic cones placed before their desiccated remnants!

My my my . . .

But there is more:

Look for yourself--a giant termite mound! Perhaps the giant termites have been put to work to mince the dead tree corpses into rubble? Perhaps. I admit I saw no giant termites at work--though most scientists agree that giant termites are nocturnal. I think.

Nonetheless, the greater horror, if you have the eye for it, is that surrounding this area of perpetual massacre are living trees! Yes, the poor living trees that are forced to hide and conceal this shameful death camp must also witness the horror that they engulf!

More my my my.

And look!:

Yes. Above and beyond the horrific horizon are only more horrors upon the horrific horizon.

How horrifying!

The towers and great globular machinery that is but the work of The Apparatus and the inner heartless heart of Soybean island itself!

Ah. It makes me quite sad to have discovered this, to have seen it with my own eyes . . . If only I could have used someone else's eyes!

But just as I was lost in my despair and disgust, I saw a thing which gave me hope, which jolted me out of my personal diaspora and filled me with great wonder . . . Well, perhaps not great, but a modicum of wonder, or made me wonder. 

It was this!:

Look closer:

Yes!

It is a great Tree God of some sort. Some rustic rough-hewn majestic wooden statuary. A Stump-The-Redeemer, if you will. It is an attempt to bring the dead trees back to life, to resurrect them--not in the form of a tree itself--but in the form of a giant man!

I believe that this has been constructed by the remaining descendants of the Eye-Nye-Hab race. I believe that they still exist and live in hiding amongst the local country-club insurance-salesmen-farmer-class-type inhabitants of this despicable place. And they have put this up for all to see!

May it be so. may it please be so.

1957 over and out,

Goodbye from Soybean island