I was so angry at the park yesterday.
Not anger felt as I was present but anger towards the location. I visit there enough to call myself a regular, which feels nice because I’ve always wanted to frequent a cafe or bar in which the merchants recall my face and order, and I recall their names and marital statuses. I love people. I love knowing and being known by people.
I hate being known by places.
A place can be so assuming. Passing judgment and memories instead of reciprocating niceties. No matter the face you put on or the arm you reach out. You can walk past or through them with your head down or up and regardless, it will stare. Places do not forgive you. And they definitively do not forget.
I was so angry at the park yesterday.
As I was walking with my dog’s leash in my hand I caught myself glaring at the hill next to the sidewalk. Specifically at the grass. It is winter and as January’s in California go, green often sticks around.
Isn’t that insulting?
Ignoring the protocols of the season?
It is a definitive truth: change exists. It is needed for equilibrium. In relationships. In religion. In all things that matter while we’re alive. Like the flipping of a pancake (though I am sure the battered side feels some sort of sting the moment it meets hot oil), it is necessary for maturity. Figuratively and literally the laws of nature:
Grass turns gray in the winter.
Grass dies because it is time.
I am no naturalist but this seems to be a consistent pattern with all undomesticated plants here on earth. The grass was as green as it ever was and that made me so angry. Seasons change for reasons I cannot name. All I know is that I have been consistently grateful God created four of them and only one Spring. We die. We grow.
We ripen, often non-consensually, but ripen nonetheless. So why was this grass at the park not following the cycle of living? The sphere of change that everything and everyone else has to and had to oblige to since the holy Genesis itself?
It was time, it was winter, it was death season and just like I had to cut my hair and break my back and lick my wounds to survive again, it needed to wither too. I am not saying it deserved to be tortured or violently scalped in the same fashion of my particular cross, but I am saying: this is just how it has to be.
Right?
All at once my mind contemplated the reasoning behind this. What type of deal with the devil did this grass make to stay alive and hydrated with life? What offering was placed at the altar of reality? Because its blades were obviously so consistent with vigor and hydration and joy yet I had to surrender to the cycle of death and rebirth over and over and over and over.
What defamation.
What insult.
I stopped walking for a moment in my rage and realized if I pushed my eyebrows together any harder I’d gift myself a deep wrinkle and a migraine. The sun was so sweet in the sky. It felt like she was telling me to exhale and slow down. Maybe my dog was too. Seething sizzled and the grass didn’t transpire. Didn’t yell back. Didn’t harden. Instead it stayed green. The hill I was screaming at held out something I couldn’t ignore. An offering I knew was coming like a communion cup. A memory. A moment in time many moons ago. My skin had been shed nine times over but the hill remembered the old me. Past me was a part of it. She was looking into emerald green eyes. And she was happy.
The man I loved is marrying someone else.
And I was so angry at the park yesterday.