DIMINISHED THOUGHT

I saw them cut down a palm tree the other day. One thing that struck me when moving to Los Angeles was all the palm trees. I should have expected it. I'm told they're a type of grass and looking at them surviving in this concrete jungle I can believe it as they seem able to sprout from any crack the sidewalk provides them. They are ubiquitous. Still I remember hearing on NPR a while back that they're not native and that many of them are sick. It's not hard to believe as they often have dead fronds hanging from them even as they tower over all the single and double story buildings that seem to make up LA. I guess that's why when I saw them cutting one down it seemed so interesting. They're not going to replant them and as they die they'll slowly disappear from the cityscape. The workers in hard hats had stopped traffic on Flower Street behind my parking structure and were using a sling attached to a crane to lower it to the ground. The palm was springy, wobbling a little bit in the air as the crane slowly lowered it the pavement and dropped it so carefully that it was almost possible to believe that it didn't make a sound. Of course, I couldn't know that. I was in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner blasting.