8/10/10 the color green:
-my friend Cass is color blind and so doesn’t see green but only sees shades of grey that kind of blend together (sorry Cass if I’m getting that wrong). I think that she can feel the color green though because she correctly reports objects as green, even when they’re not plants.
-this girl Margie in my psych class in high school wrote in my yearbook, “don’t forget to feel all the colors that you hear.” We were mocking a certain drug-induced psychedelia, but it’s also psychedelightful to think about mashing the senses together.
-from the morning bus—pine and spruce with their whispering prickly green recesses and shadows.
-the light yellowish-green grasses in august longing to give way to tan fiber when the heat goes.
-faded, like the leaves on a lone fruit tree in the scrub of a boulevard turn, the dropped idea of some squirrel or crow.
-imaginary/overbright/neon like the plastic sign of a taco stand, the fiery glow of a traffic signal.
-the florescent green crowns of box elders sentinel along warehouse walls.
-the dark smudgy clumpy green of oaks who have resisted urban renewals between thoroughfares.
-green of factory lawns, undecided as to whether to be lush or neglected.
-Hopeful green of weeds sticking their necks out of sidewalk cracks.
-highway signs that make no pretense toward biology.
-“For Lease,” “metro transit here,” or “NE Pierce St.”
-the looming sky, sometimes, when tornadoes come. The bright feeling of huddling from the weather in an underground room. The songs we sing to greet and soothe the monster storms.
-the robust bluish hue of oceanic algae.
-The layer of algic slime across the surface of the planet, a coating like chocolate over candied fruit.
-the specks of chlorophyll in each of my salad’s leaves, chlorophylling me up.
-more oceanic greens, more oceanic plants, the ideas of plants, the heart chakras of plants and humans and dogs and birds and tarantulas.
-the eyes of someone I once loved.
-the dense, shredded boles that fall from the underside of the lawnmower, the grassy salad stuck to the mower’s wheels.
-the heart chakras of all of humanity. The heart chakras of the gods, of the creator. The heart chakras of myths and monsters and chimeras. The linings of worm holes that I’ve traveled through.
-The northern lights, exchange of electrical impulses, mini shocks from carpets.
-some stars that I’ve known. Desires that I’ve had. Desires that all of humanity has had.
-the strong green that holds up heavy goldenrod heads.
-light, fluorescing green of garden hostas.
-shaggy, yellowing green of day lily fronds
-my heart, how I love in this day. The green of hope, of crying out in joy, of reaching forth into nothingness to create.
-a newspaper box, a stained guardrail, the building’s painted metal trim.
-graffiti green, loving expression sprayed onto the side of a building.
-grape vines, excited and fruity.
-the waxy bluish green of cottonwood leaves
-a verdigris roof, coppery and flaking
-the cold false reflections in skyscraper windows of all of the above. The warm reflections in the eyes of my friends, my family.
-the feeling of vining, of tendrilling, of intertwining, of trailing one’s fingers in the air.
-the smell of cool water next to a lake, over a river, standing in a creek. The feeling of being protected.