Wednesday, February 18, 2009

It's Not Easy...


...there’s nothing more clichéd to be said about green than that it’s the color of spring...though that might be a perfect example of the dictum that a cliché becomes a cliché because it works...though that, as somebody pointed out in a movie...though I can’t remember which...is also a cliché...and, by now, the point that the cliché is a cliché might be as well...and thus far more old and tired than spring-like and green....I’d better start over...

...spring, like green, is more complicated than we might think...April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire...rising fresh and green from the comfortable dirt can be painful...things get buried for a reason...but spring brings it all back up...

...I tasted green for the first time in April 1983...seventeen and far too alienated and miserable to be too bothered that, according to all I’d been taught, green would quickly lead to heroin and death...it didn’t, was actually rather refreshing, for a while ...even if it ended up a dead vine that held on tight for far too long before finally peeling away....nowadays, I’d rather do yoga...

...or take a walk in the woods...consumed in luxuriant green....it’s hard not to be clichéd here, too...might as well give in to my inner muppet...why wonder, why wonder I’m green, guess that’s the way I wanna be...though it might never be the same after I ate that deep fried frog at that Chinese restaurant back in November...like chicken, but a lot more bones...so you're right, Kermit, it's not easy bein' green...

...even worse, though, would be talking about the environment...the green of photosynthesis, mountains, meadows, and life in general squaring off against the most all-consuming green of all...and guess which wins almost every time?...“green” labels seeming to represent the first serving only to bring more of the other to oil and pharmaceutical companies...

...god, is it possible to be more cynical and morose in writing about green?..those reading this in the archives, or the tropics or southern hemisphere might wanna note that it’s February in Philadelphia...my 43rd birthday rapidly approaching...(as mentioned previously, my sign of the Zodiac is Charlie the Three Toed Sloth...though I also share the day with the guy who wrote show me that I’m everywhere, and get me home for tea)...and green seems far away...

...in the end, though, green is a state of mind...I now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin wrote Walt Whitman...knowing, even though 37 back then was a lot older than 43 now, that a person can begin at any time...and, however misused, let’s face it, green will outlast us all...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have green eyes, so I guess I'm a little prejudiced ... but it is my fave colour. Although there are many shades of green and some I don't like ... a deep aqua green sea colour is tops for me.

Lydia said...

Can you be any more brilliant than to come up with this?

Anonymous said...

I'm a green eyed lass, too... sometimes they look more green than others. Depending on what I'm wearing, eye makeup, and how tired I am. Yeah yeah, my Celticness coming back to bite me - red hair, green eyes and freckles!

As previously mentioned, I'm also rampantly in love with green food - naturally green food that is.

And one of my favourite t-shirts is green with big red lips all over it.

Tried that other kinda green you mentioned... never was that into it (lucky me) but it was a contributing factor to a friend's suicide many years ago now.

My favourite green is that brilliant gemstone green of lush new grass, recently grown and heavily watered - so lush, so tender and vibrant.

Though, sometimes right now in Australia, that sort of green is hard to find. In the drought we're having, so many fields of grass left un-watered, whilst our football and cricket pitches (and most golf courses) manage to obtain the rights to keep watering so their green does not reflect what's going on around them.

Green is something we could use in country Victoria, too, right now. Instead, we have the blackened husks of burned out native bush and the remains of homes (recently populated).

All will be green again, of course, I've seen it before here a few times in my life. But until then... we wait for that first green shoot or bud, showing us the cycle is starting again.

Anonymous said...

Numbers are relative to some people and pure illusions to others. You can shape your perspective with any color or take steps to peel away all color from your perception. WHen you do that long eneough, you arrive at an imperceptible emptiness or nothingness. This is pure consciousness on a level where everything is as it has always been and you finally get it.

Lana Gramlich said...

You were born under the sign of the Sloth? I was born under the sign of the Smart Ass, myself. ;)
I can understand the cynicism about green, although I try to remove humanity from the equasion & just enjoy all of the wonderful green that Earth shows every day. That helps. Some.