it's that time of year

When the christmas trees, at those select spots in the city where they are sold (a corner here, a parking lot there, all perched unhappily, it seems, in little cinched holders, no water for days, yet holding on defiantly to their inherent festiveness), lie in a heap around the second week of January, I find the sight poignant. Certainly it's in part because these are the ones that were not picked; not by urban dwellers, those families who look forward to this ritual every year, singles deciding for the first time to light their city apartment with a tree (a real! tree), not picked at all. But this morning, I was struck by the flash of memory of a ghastly picture in the paper that morning; those killed in Haiti by the massive earthquake of early January, 2010--lying near a morgue, similarly nameless and unidentified, 'discarded' by natural disaster. It made me think about the uniqueness of each life--and particularly of lives perhaps unnoticed, uncelebrated, or unidentified in the midst of tragedy, or of the change of seasons. And it made me think about the ways by which I fail to notice scores of lives, walking past me, lying near me, sitting adjacent on the train, on any given day.