Arboreal

Watch on Vimeo.

Moonlit night without the moon. In the treetops I see the shapes of various beasts, real and mythical, all in a slow retreat toward extinction. The trees themselves radiate hostility, and who can blame them? We are building apocalypse.

Let the ideologues go first, exploding like mushrooms into a fertile smoke of spores. Let workers who fall asleep on their feet get new infusions of sap. Let artists and musicians grow sleek new tails, as long as themselves and infinitely suggestible. What a relief to be monkeys again and hurl our shit about with abandon! The forest will have no choice but to return.

foggy night
I come home to find a leaf
stuck to my shirt

***

Process notes

As anyone who’s been following this series will know, I spend a lot of time outside at night. My iPhone’s video camera, however, does not perform well in low-light conditions, so to get “night” shots like the one here, I have to film at dusk and then desaturate. I did, however, pick up a leaf on my shirt on the very walk shown in the video. (And it was fully dark by the time I got back.) I even posted a photo of the leaf to Instagram. The prose portion of the haibun evolved from a free write based on sitting out in the woods two nights later.

As usual, I thought I was done with the thing but held off uploading until I’d slept on it. (Nighttime, it seems, is integral to my process even when it’s not the subject of the haibun.) Following which, of course, I completely re-wrote the haiku and fiddled around with the soundtrack.

I should add that in this time of social distancing and economic downturn, I’m grateful to local businesses for continuing to provide free wifi. I’d have a much harder time uploading these videos without them.