I wait for Otis. I wait. Even if the alligator doesn't show his face until after the course is over, I will write about him. This is my goal and this is something I'm looking forward to, something I have great anticipation toward. I hope I can do it justice when the snow melts and the alligator comes out to play.
My human buddies at the visitor's office,
who now know me by name (or probably
when I'm not around they know me by
"that alligator/biology weirdo"), say
this plant is called a "funeral flower" though
I'm not entirely convinced they're so
worried to be correct. A search of "funeral
flower" yields exactly what you think it
would. More search soon, must buy guide.
My little buddies, whatever they are, are holding on for dear life. Let's see, they're not: Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, rye grass, cheat grass, rescue grass, quaking grass, oat grass, orchard grass, nut grass, bermuda grass, picklegrass (thought they resemble each other), clubawn grass, saw grass, windmill grass, mosquito grass, rosette grass, western panic grass, crab grass, cockspur grass, barnyard grass, billion-dollar grass, Indian goosegrass, fall witchgrass, bottlebrush grass, quackgrass, wheatgrass, lovegrass, lace grass, stinkgrass, cupgrass, finegrass, mannagrass, skeletongrass, limpograss, porcupinegrass, mudplantain, velvetgrass, orangegrass, Junegrass, rice cutgrass, whitegrass, moorgrass, dunegrass, melicgrass, miletgrass, Chinese silvergrass, scratchgrass, bent grass or zoysia.
I literally just clicked through all of those on the
USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service website, first overwhelmed by all the grasses (currently existing in PA) I don't know, secondly worried these buddies are actually flowers with the petals missing. What's scarier still, how could I not know any of these grasses by name? Now I have all these images floating in my head, and I must try to place them, one by one, over the course of my life. I have to figure out what this "plant of action" is called, or at least name
a plant before I finish the semester.
As for the other people out here, there's one older man at the zoo scraping at the snow. He hasn't asked me why I'm past the barrier and hanging out on the bridge. He's not interested in the police work, I assume, busy scratching at the earth, taking some snow and some history from the paths of this zoo.
From what I can only assume is man-made, the snow today is pinched firmly along the edge of blacktop filling in mounds. This would allow people to walk along his clearing if there were any people visiting the zoo today. He turns into a baker in my eyes, the hours before the bakery is open in the morning. The snow looks like crust, crumbly and green, brown, grey, flecks of salt which look like sugar powered along the edges. The zoo becomes a giant white pie with tough black filling. A bakery.
The way I see a pie like this in the snow makes me feel embarrassed yet I have nothing to fear but myself. I immediately think, "people will think this is a stupid analogy" when really it's my own demons who think this is stupid. It's my own demons holding me back from simple metaphor. Seeing this pie, this southern home-cooking image of a pie, makes me think of how I feel so ashamed of nature.
When I think of conventional nature, stopping to smell the flowers and grass, identifying a plant, thinking of ownership of land and crops and an intimate relationship with the "mother" Herself, I think of the countryside nature from which I was born. I say I'm from "Charleston, West Virginia" but I'm really from Alum Creek, thirty minutes out, the countryside of Charleston, the trees, sticks, grass and forest of Charleston. This home and having to write about nature now makes me think of an overpowering estrangement I must mend. I think of getting as far from trees and plants as possible. I think of all the
West Virginia stereotypes (as if you needed a link). I think of how people like
Dick Cheney can joke freely about how we are an inbred group of people. I think about how
Jon Stewart, bless him and his humor, can make people laugh about fracking, how we shouldn't drink our poisoned water from a chemical spill (
"Freedom Industries"- you can't write this shit). "Nature" makes me think of my family's natural southern twang and how I changed my own accent when I was seven because I'd noticed instances of people in person and on the national news who thought that innately people from my area are stupid, inbred, redneck farmers and hillbillies who frequent racism, bestiality, incest, and most other Neanderthal-like behavior city-folk shan't touch upon.
But fuck all that noise, Jonny.
The snow looks like pie crust. My parents speak with a music, a beautiful banjo to their voices, that I can never get back. As for nature, I'm doing my best to just accept it.
And what about the snow? Can I find some excitement in it?
Snow makes me think of whiteness. It makes me think of purity, boredom, of sadness. If I'm being serious and unafraid of inhibition, whiteness makes me think of white skin and the horrible history that comes with it. It makes me think of privilege. It makes me immediately think of Morgantown, WV's student-run newspaper,
Daily Atheneum, and how they just allowed a young man to post an article about how
it's hard out there for a white dude. I'm serious. They really did that.
I'll try to think otherwise, less dark and cynical, and think of this snowy whiteness in terms of light.
The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. Most of us know that in art mixing blue and yellow makes green, red and yellow makes orange, red and blue makes purple, etc. But in terms of light, it can be strange and doesn't seem to make sense that all the colors equal something different, and combined they equal white. White reflects all colors. We can look at snow and see its sparkle, its plainness, and not realize that it actually contains every color from the spectrum. Snow is vibrant. Snowflakes are alive. In life, they are full of connections, they've compacted together and befriended other snowflakes to make a blizzard. The light blinds me. In the same way I often don't wear my prescribed glasses to avoid seeing people, to feel more brave when staring at a blob of color rather than into the eyes and soul of another being, the glare of this snow reminds me of not wanting to make too deep, too personal, too vulnerable a connection. Then again, maybe I'm projecting my emotions onto the poor pure snow. It's just my nature estrangement blinding me again.
The snow prints I can see near the goats' area look like a pulse. A dotted line. A Pulse. Snow alive, snow being alive. What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to have a pulse? Is there a hiccup in the pulse when there's a dirt or browning of the clear, full of color, white? I don't think so. I love the focus on browns. Maybe they're considered hiccups but I like to think of smudges in the white as a break in formalities. An ease and a relaxation from all this "trying to be perfect all the time." Relax, snow. No one is judging you, snow.
I say hello to Sea Kitty Maggie before I leave the zoo.
