Day 12 Of NaPoWriMo 2018.
As a matter of fact, I do live in ticky tacky, almost identical, overpriced, box on this side of the Cascades. There are little ticky tacky houses up on the hillside, most are shades of beige, there is a bright, tropical, neon green one. There is an indigo one. A purple one too. As a matter of fact, these lego houses are inhabited by the sameness lego clones of doctors and lawyers and engineers – the software and other kinds – and interior decorators, and designers and executives. And they are all properly coiffed, made-up, gymed-up, nipped and tucked. And they all have over-scheduled, over-achieving, beautiful children, who have their whole life planned and their deaths too. And they, too, look gorgeous, all gymed-up, made-up and properly groomed.
But, as a matter of fact, there are these tall evergreens and tall deciduous trees that are not at all cheesy and they sport, now that it is spring, all types of shades of green: android and apple green, asparagus and avocado, bright and light green, chartreuse and cyan, dark and light green, harlequin and hooker’s green, Kelly and Cal Poly, and teal and turquoise and mint and malachite green and office and sea green, too. And don’t forget the jungle and persian and olive and pine green.
As a matter of fact, there is this stream that meanders across a natural set aside habitat, the one that somehow managed to escape those same makers of identical, lego houses. And this stream gathers speeds and plunges off a basalt rocks and transforming itself into a beautiful waterfall. And as a matter of fact, those same makers of ticky tacky boxes, feeling guilty perhaps, cleaned up the area, build a boardwalk and a viewing platform, and setup benches for lego people to enjoy. When you are down at this anomaly in the urban setting, you do hear seconds of silence, punctuated by long constant noise of those ticky tacky residents driving their ticky tacky automobiles and all wishing, just wishing they were all not the same:
human clones wishing
for a unique life, miss what’s
right in front of them.
Notes
Today’s prompt was to write a haibun, specifically:
We’ve challenged you to tackle the haibun in past years, but it’s such a fun one, we couldn’t resist again. Today, we’d like to challenge you specifically to write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live. It may be the high sierra, dusty plains, lush rainforest, or a suburbia of tiny, identical houses – but wherever you live, here’s your chance to bring it to life through the charming mix-and-match methodology of haibun.
I took the inspiration of the prose part of the haibun from folk singer Malvina Reynolds’ 1962 song Little Boxes, which was the theme song of tv series Weeds.
