You never trust a millionaire Quoting the sermon on the mount

This post should be read while listening to Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs (in particular City with no Children, Sprawl 2, and Half Light 2). So with those lyrics going in the background, now we can proceed.

Today I came home to this:

This is yet another reason as to why I kind of hate my neighborhood. We have one token tree out in front and today the company that does all of the landscape work in the HOA came and trimmed the trees. But they took off way too many branches and left the tree an unsightly shape that is a scrawnier and just plain less attractive version of its former self. Even a year and a half later I regularly miss my yard back at Millstone Drive. I certainly do today. Back then I never came home to my trees (note the plural) being violated.

The major problem I have with this neighborhood is that it is way too gucci. Although they left (relatively speaking) more green space than any other recently developed neighborhood in Chapel Hill, there is no getting around the fact that it is a bunch of ridiculously over-sized houses. We are the bottom feeders of the neighborhood in the townhouses in the back. The fact that a place as big as this could be construed as bottom feeding is in itself messed up, because there is no where else in the world where a family of 4 would take up this much space. I find it embarrassing; we take up too much space and have too much stuff. The day I get to consecrate all of these things will be a welcome one. My major concern is how we conflate progress and success with gucci neighborhoods and large tvs and, well, things. I hope that growing up in such a place does not result in my children conflating such things.

In addition to Arcade Fire's contribution, there are also quite a few poems by Rilke which capture some of my feelings about this plastic place where I live. Here is one selection, from page 231 of his Book of Hours (see also page 217):
~~~~
The cities only care for what is theirs
and uproot all that's in their path.
They crush the creatures like hollow sticks
and burn up nations like kindling.

Their people serve the culture of the day,
losing all balance and moderation,
calling their aimlessness progress,
driving recklessly where they once drove slow,
and with all that metal and glass
making such a racket.

It's as if they were under a spell:
they can no longer be themselves.
Money keeps growing, takes all their strength,
and empties them like a scouring wind,
while they wait for wine and poisonous passions
to spur them to fruitless occupations.
~~~~

I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.