A Revisitation of Snow's Livelihood; A Not-So-Meditation

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.

Otis Gator

Because it was just too damn cold, the Pittsburgh Zoo was not full of beautiful slobbering children attached to harnesses today. I mean... it was painfully frigid, where the air burned then stung in pecks of bristling cold. The gift shops were not hot from the too-many-human-body, less a meat sauna, more an empty structure. Pittsburgh is getting over a "polar vortex." There are no parents rolling their eyes at their babies in strollers who cry about spilled Dip-N-Dots or truncated time with the strong, popular, elegant tiger.

"Do you need a map?"
"No thanks!"

There was one mapless man who passed up the big-headed tiger without a second thought. He was wearing an oversized black parka, his eyes just showing below a fur hood. He sweat in winter weather as he barreled up and around the hill, past where the flamingos were in the summer. That's me, barreling.

One goal: visit Otis the alligator.

I was making my way to this gator and it was taking longer than usual. Frost had taken all the plant life, crab grass mostly, along the edges of the pavement walkway. The little brown plant fingers spilled out to the path in patches of dead hay and dirt. Little shapes and pictures were patterned within this crime scene, that feeling of maybe hallucinating, maybe living. People no doubt stepped on those little bits of life, just as I do, not thinking twice about whether a plant carries life or not. A lot of people do, though. They're awake to the Lifestream.

I started to feel a little weird at my remorse for these dead weeds, then I shut that shit out of my brain.

I realize again and again how much I wish I hadn't ignored the Latin flower words I'd ignored for nearly forever: biennial, biannual, perennials, bicentennials. One I know: annual. That one's easy enough. But why am I satisfied otherwise? There is just so much I don't know. I barely know milkweeds from marigolds. Pine from Cyprus. I know to go "bird by bird" as Anne Lamott says, but it'd probably help if I could name a bird. I guess there's always a start somewhere, sometime after I get to this alligator, wherever that may be.

After I passed a vacated Pepsi stand to my left, and about fifty more feet, and some fresh poo smell later, I took a closer look at the map with worn curled edges posted on the large brown building, pictures of elephants posted all over. I smelled elephant shit. As I pinpointed the "YOU ARE HERE" sticker, I realized I'm on the other side of the zoo, pretty far from Otis. Disappointing, but funny all the same. A sticker told me where to go.

Honestly, I don't remember a single time any map has made me happy, really. And that's all the wielder's fault, of course. A little more walking.

No doubt I looked a little crazy trudging around the zoo by myself with this glossy patterned book in my hand, and who cares, I love weirdos and I am a weirdo. I'd gotten my book from my best lady friend from high school. While it was a gorgeous book, sure, it was a little too pretty. Shiny and shimmery. The pages were empty and clean, sewn into a leather binding. Smelled nice, too.

It just didn't fit me.

 If I could make a notebook that was more me, it'd have large grey scales. The pages would have to be super crusty, and it'd have a flaky ribbon which broke every time you most needed it. It would reek. However, there would be a charm to this notebook, a little curl around the lip. If you looked at it just so, it would smile just like an alligator, and somehow everything would be fine.

I'd finally reached the right area only to find the sidewalk barricaded for renovations. I thought that it seemed a little strange to leave the animals unattended and block off that section of the zoo for no reason.

I don't suppose I need to tell you how quickly I climbed over the barrier. And of course, obvious to any mildly to moderately intelligent person, what I found was frozen lake devoid of Otis. Alligators live in the Southern parts of the United States and rare parts of Southern China for a reason. It's warm there. An undersized plastic alligator in Otis's stead smiled at me blankly.

I spent twenty minutes sitting with the rocks and listening to water trickle, slipping down the sides of rocks into the frozen water. Some large plants poked up out of the rubble like the remaining hairs from a man's balding scalp. Crackling and rustling in the distance made me pop up like a prairie dog to watch for staff members, predators. I wondered if the zoo staff would find me and tell me to get lost. I almost hoped that the alligator had adapted to his surroundings, hiding in camouflage behind a mossy rock or in the darker leaves, ready at any moment for guerrilla warfare.

I have reaffirmed this is going to be my spot. I had a journey at this zoo filled with smells, sights, feelings, powerful images, whatever. I didn't really get to reflect on those yet. Here I am, sitting on the cold pavement with my shiny shimmery book, thinking about a half-natural half-man-made construct for an alligator. Very urbanatural, isn't it? Otis seems to have been relocated from the glitz and glamour of having human beings chatter about his existence, at least when it's cold. Good for him.

At the skin of the ice, leaves which used to swim around were encased at its surface.

I wondered where someone had encased Otis.