The arteries of afluenza reach south of Kansa City into sold farm lands. I am working at an extension of these reaches in a cul-de-sac of three quarter to one and a half million dollar houses. Outside the manicured division are fields and what remains of the vernacular abodes. Descent homes in their own rite, but with barns, or near barns, most now over run and abandon. At the end of the pavement on a dirt road I spied a house in the brush, near over grown and hidden in the foliage. In Missouri a house can disappear from sight from the road in a relatively few seasons. I investigated out of curiosity and found a place in shambles. The house is open from the front porch. There are several cars parked around it including an old Triumph sports car, likely unsalvageable at this point. The house was full of stuff as if the occupants had simply walked away from it. This could have been a death, or a meth house bust. There are a lot of possibilities. I would guess last occupancy was ten to fifteen years ago. There was some graffiti and damage from trespassers and what looked like kids partying there. The occupants were hoarders of stuff and most of what was in the attic had fallen through the ceilings and littered the floors with a the sheetrock and insulation debris. There were places where the floor had given way to dump it’s contents into the cellar. This was a mess best suited for a bulldozer and a dump truck. I was thinking this morning of the contrast between the remains of human occupancy and what is left behind when a critter in the woods dies. On walks in the woods I will come across the scattered bones of some creature, large enough to leave a sign of it’s existence. Seldom are all the bones together. And what is left, if it’s been a while, is clean and organic. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as is the case with our flesh, except that we have this issue of the formaldehyde embalmed body loaded into the varnished and upholstered casket which is then put in a cement container and buried under a stone marker. But some day it will all be dust to dust. Our flesh, and all the stuff we collected, produced, consumed, and coveted. We are a strange anomaly on this earth in this respect. Hell bent, it seem, to add to ourselves with our possessions. Or hide ourselves among them.