Fragments of Kodachrome: "The Greens of Summer"

~Alternative Post Title: "Jesus Was A Pedestrian TOO!"

I'm a walker.

Since living in Paris, France for a year when I was eighteen, where I walked daily for hours on end, I have been a walker. A year later, as an undergraduate, I walked from my first-ever apartment (!) *every single day*, even during many really nasty Canadian-Prairie winter storms, to university. The walk was a 45-minute one, over a frozen lake, almost literally in the middle of the prairie (to look to the left would be to see a grain farm...). Most days, I loved it. I would arrive at campus in the early morning (MacroEconomics at 8:00 am!). I would hustle to my locker where I could quickly ditch my snow suit and my big-ass black Sorel Boots--you know the ones:

(That's right: big-ASS^ boots. Not those embarrassing pink UGG boots that female college students in Texas (in Texas!?!) break out of their closets when it drops to 34 degrees Farenheit so they can pair them with a cute-ass^ skirt, thereby making their anorexic, orange-tanned legs look even more anorexic and freakish.)

Oh right: gratitude was to be part of this post--

A good decade later, I continue to find myself walking everyday, still to a campus. This time it's the heat that I must battle as I make my way. But this time, it's just a 15-minute walk. I love this time of day: it's the time to gather myself, collect my thoughts, watch the daily bird activity and smirk at the crazy-ass squirrels running about.

But in the new place of which I have recently become an inhabitant, it's also become the time for me to rage. Specifically what I want to yell out daily is:

"JESUS TOO WAS A PEDESTRIAN!!"

In fact, I'm about ready to carry an immense placard with this written on it. You see, where I'm living now--the American Southwest*--the vehicle (the monster truck or the immense SUV*) reigns supreme and pedestrians are of the lowest order. So each day, as I begin to make my peaceful journey to work, I inevitably find myself at some point nearly run down by said truck or SUV. (Often, I must look something like the character of Fin from The Station Agent , diving into the bushes to escape near-death from an SUV.)

And the thing that really gets me (besides the conspicuous consumption and out-right waste of these nasty entities) is that, as the vehicle roars by, kicking dust* up in my face, I notice this:

Now, I have nothing against one's right to bear one's religious identity on one's monster-machine* (that is killing mother-earth daily); but, if for no other reason than the plain fact that *JESUS WALKED THIS EARTH TOO*, would you, dear polluting-machine-driving-Christian, please mind not trying to run me off the road each day???

Rage/Gratitude: it's walking a fine line each day here. To reestablish myself today, once sitting down to work, I read some poetry by Robert Sullivan, an Aboriginal writer. I'll share some with y'all* now, just in case today, you've had to suffer the same fate as I:



I touch your cloak of cedars here
stroke your face and body
press feet onto your belly
[...]



Earth is still mother here still cools my feet amid wild flowers
heels pressing boardwalk into beaver territory, kilometres of path
for heels to drum
and trees singing green tongued choruses
licking air licking birds licking the singing molecules of creation
[...]
we are earth people with an eye to sky [...]

to sounds of leaves
whose roots draw sound

round throats that orbit
green tongues recycled in the ground

Rondo. Rondo earth. Rondo.
Listen. Rhythm. Listen.

You can be a [place]
for ceremonies.
-- Robert Sullivan (in Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights, 223-24)


EDIT after posting:
*OKAY, it must be sooooo obvious: Texas, to be exact.
^How many times can one use ASS as a descriptor? I must get my thesaurus down next time--

**FINAL EDIT**: Many photos were taken this morning of ORANGINA's progress and my participation in PROJECT SPECTRUM; my partner is uploading them this afternoon and so, FOR SURE, there will be KNITTING CONTENT on this blog either tonight or tomorrow morning. Again, promises...promises...