A nice farmer wanted to sell his Christmas tree farm—a sprawling beauty with little green triangular forms popping from the ground like garden gnomes. It was too heavy and too messy. There was too much dirt, poop and little prickly needles. The trees were hefty and offended his aging back. He has neither the back power to scatter fertilizer across the plains, nor the brain power to sit in a chair all day in the freezing cold watching people spend hours choosing “the tree.” All the trees were identical. They literally looked exactly the same. Regardless, massive domestic arguments erupted from tree consumers; they stared at each tree like it was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics tablet.
Olive and Sabrina wanted to buy this Christmas tree farm.
They were centered around New York City (for the most part), and the Christmas tree farm was nestled in the wooded areas right outside, in a small town called “Annandale on Hudson,” where well-off people tend to buy their maple syrup from vendors at the weekend-ly West Brooklyn organic food market.
Olive and Sabrina discussed The Container Store, an organization emporium. The Container Store is the place you go to sort your life and soul. They have every kind of container ever invented in the history of mankind. They have containers for:
-food
-clothes
-knick-knacks
-tic-tacs
They have containers for containers, all placed in massive shelves that are definitely taller than the largest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen. The store is plastic-y and a bit fluorescent. It may remind you of a waiting room you would see in the Matrix.
The two discussed the farm while trying to buy milk at the store that does not sell milk. They only sell containers. Olive proposed the farm idea when passing an aisle of pink, skull shaped bowls. Olive has seen the plot of land with the white for sale sign a couple days before when she was driving into the city in her car 1970s milk truck-looking car. Olive’s milk truck likes to barrel down hills – she always hoped it would remain loyal to her and outflank gravity’s natural inclination. She wondered who had the authority to plant that for sale sign over the sprawling field of wild trees. She imagined a man in corduroy trousers planting his flag of ownership. His pants were tight in the calves but loose in the thighs. He wore a Dutch style-whaling hat and dragged a long, metal stick across the dirt, one that resembles the plastic cylinders they sell in aisle eight. She compartmentalized the thought and continued driving home. Olive grew up in a town outside of New York City filled with old, New England fisherman houses peering over the Hudson River. Olive enjoyed living there and commuting into the city. Her parents moved away when Olive was 20 and left a sticky note with lots of hearts so she wouldn’t feel abandoned. She didn’t feel like moving into New York with everyone else, so she stayed in her parent’s unfurnished home with a mattress on the floor and lots of empty water bottles because she got thirsty during the night.
She meant to buy some bottles, there was an entire floor devoted to bottles above. They headed upstairs.
As they went up the escalator, passing rows of plastic, geometric shapes, Sabrina related why she wanted this Christmas tree farm.
1) She passed it on the way to Olive’s house a couple days before.
2) She liked the smell of pine as she biked too quickly down the hill.
She stopped pedaling and lightly put her hands on the brakes as to avoid the roots protruding out of the ground. The small trees popped out of the earth in nice, neat little lines. Their natural, triangular form was far more appealing than the Christmas trees she used to peruse at a Target department store in Mid-Western suburbs. Sabrina came from a place she coined “the suburban wasteland.” She was driven in a BMW SUV with her mother and her brother. In that life, they circled the parking lot and stopped in a space that was not occupied by another SUV. She recalled the neon lights of the department store, similar to the lights that presently peered down over aisles of plastic bottles. Piles of small, fabric snowmen from China welcomed them through automatic sliding doors. Sabrina’s mother wanted to buy a plastic Christmas tree because they do not cause a royal mess. Sabrina touched a plastic tree and liked how it felt against her palm so she turned around and started rubbing her back against it. It really felt quite nice, and she began to wonder if she could ask her mother to buy her a back scratcher. As she continued to scratch her back against the synthetic tree, a cute boy with a red Target vest asked her to please stop or leave. This really hurt Sabrina’s feelings. She grumbled and made her own tree out of red- construction paper once she arrived home.
By this point, Olive and Sabrina had a shopping cart filled with colorful containers. Olive had lots of re-usable plastic water bottles and boxes to store toiletries. They had cylinders, rectangles, diamonds and squares, all in a variety of colors, all to bring an order to things.
Sabrina wanted to buy the Christmas tree farm because:
1) She liked the order of it.
2) She liked how each tree stood next to the other in an organized line
3) It was satisfying. It made her feel in control of things.
Olive wanted the farm because:
1) she no longer had reasons to live outside of New York City. Here friends were there, her job was there, the only thing she has in the wooded “outside” was an old house with a mattress on the floor.
2) The Christmas tree farm would give her a purpose on the outside, she could hide away in a field of geometric trees and get her jeans stained brown by fertilizer.
3) It could be her fairy place away from the world where things really existed.
They considered going into aisle five. That is where the largest, most prestigious containers are held. They are massive enough to keep a medium-sized Christmas tree actually, and they tower high into the store’s skies. The most majestically colored boxes are on the top—so to retrieve them you must use a very large metal rod. Sabrina thought she wanted one.
They span through aisle four and made a sharp U-turn into aisle five. They peered up into the heavens and saw the plastic squares towering over them. Sabrina reached out. She tried to pull one out but it refused to come down. She used the massive metal pole provided and tried to grab the blue one from the very top. It nudged in agreement but then the tower collapsed. The boxes went everywhere and created a sea of mayhem. A few startled people shrieked and a couple clerks rushed to aid.
There were boxes everywhere. Olive and Sabrina could barely run away. The manager scolded them. They pranced like fairies through the ocean of large containers. They left their shopping cart filled with things and never mentioned the Christmas tree farm again.
