It's a Grandview of Man

This morning is cold and the sun is vaguely shining. I want green and there is only brown. River mud and coffee with too much cream. A guy walks by me with a backpack; he is the carried sound of keys jingling. Cars wash past as swatches of noisy concrete sound. They drive fast. Too fast. There are tourists here. There's a view to be found. A decorative flag whips against a streetlamp post like a gong jangle. Another man walks by. He has a fluffy yellow-brown dog. He whistles, wrinkles the newspaper he reads as he walks. It's all commuters this morning. Everything is moving. Everything is sound.

I take my usual steps. Up to the railing, to the look out - to look out. But instead, today, I look down. Today, I am tired of my place. Tired of the view of a big city, of buildings and riverboats and barges. I wish, for a moment, that I had chosen a place somewhere else. Somewhere covered and covered and covered in trees.

Below is this hillside. The snow is all gone and the ground is something other than clean and white. Below the railing is compressed grass, like sun-faded, yellowed old newspaper. The trees have all been cut to the quick (probably to give way to the view). And the rest of the color that litters the ground is what remains of plastic and can.

Here's what I see:

Three blue plastic bags, one crumpled, one folded and wrapped around the ground, one flapping in the wind, held pressed against itself and the long stalks of laid-down grass by one Monster can, one sock, one red Solo cup; two more red Solo cups are around, as if someone modern thought one red blink on this litter-spread hill was not enough; one Gatorade bottle, clear and empty; one yellow shiny wrapper the size to wrap a candy but the wrapper is flat, so the candy is gone, eaten or dissolved or washed away by the rain or the snowmelt; and… one Fiji bottle, one Arizona can; one IC Lite, one Natty Ice; a Cheetos bag, a plastic cup and its lid, a cigarette butt, a Mambo wrapper, a brown bean pod. A brown bean bod? A seed pod. Yes. Tossed by the trees. Not some kid or some Man - made of trees - not of plastic. (and I:) tried to look it up. Name it. Find its copyright, its company name. But it's nowhere in the ethernet. Nowhere I can find. I'll have to pick one up and take it home. Take it somewhere, somewhere that it's known. 

On the wooden bench behind me:

To love and be loved, JB luvs BM, ROG + Em, B+N, JOL and a misshaped, half-carved swastika sign.

On the buildings:

Highmark, K & L Gates, Reed Smith, First Niagra, the sun slashing blinding white lines across glass

There is grass stubble around parking meters that still take quarters. A swivel-view-finder. Takes quarters. A fire hydrant. Yellow. Peeling. Takes many men to take water. Squelch a fire. Sidewalks. Wooden benches. Guardrails that guard us from falling over the mountain. Doesn't guard the mountain. Not from what we can throw.

I steep in the warmth of my car, my hands thawing slightly as I document my man-made thoughts of all of this evidence of our presence around here. So much Man around here. It makes me wonder why I chose this place as my nature spot, when what I think of nature is: Forests and trees. Greens. Valleys, grasses and bees. Mountains and hillsides. Blue skies, open fields. The bellies of birds as they soar.

But my qualifications? They are here. This mountainside covered with trees, their dead limbs, their cut stumps. With grasses and seeds. The rivers down below. A valley of water and land. Birds that dance in the updrafts. Phantom shadows on the hillsides. More sky than blue can be.

But still: This is a cityscape landscape. A nature of man. A man-made nature.

The City as a Mirror 

          

                   Today I want to escape myself. I am over- 

saturated. With: words, ideas, worries, memories, philosophies, futures, ideals. 

                   With: thinking and dreaming and talking and listening.  

                   With: Man and his words. But: I am Man and these words. 

                   And: I am in love with Man and his words. I need them like

                           clean air, and water, and land. 

                   But: Man, sometimes I need space. A space 

                                                                                                away from myself. 

I can't see the city for the snow

Today, looking at the city of Pittsburgh from my perch on Grandview is like looking through a thin piece of gauze. The snow is coming down in fat swirling pats of white, so that the buildings are hazy and indistinct. It’s almost like a heavy fog has settled over the city. When I look directly up into the solely white sky, the flakes seem to come from nowhere, emerging and then falling in a lazy descent. I try to follow one, or many, to the ground, where light and fluffy the snow has accumulated to at least 4 inches. But each flake disappears into the layered snow, as mysteriously as it came from above.

I think that winter is the season when water slows down. In the spring, summer and fall, water is a fast, rushing force – it comes in downpours and flashfloods; it can overflow rivers and wash away mountainsides. But in winter, water is different. It changes form. It is snow. It is ice. As if winter is water’s season to meditate – two hydrogen, one oxygen – slowing down; three molecules trying out a different design. It doesn’t lose its elemental power, but it makes a different show of things.

I think of meditation because these flakes fall slowly; they drift to the ground without any apparent need to hurry, to get to the ground. If it was warmer outside, these intricate little flakes would be solid drops, racing to hit the pavement, wet the soil, fill the rust-colored river below. But not snow. Even the way it piles up seems egoless, in a way. When it lands and collects with the rest of the snow, I hardly can distinguish when it disappears. It doesn’t make ripples along a surface; it doesn’t make a sound.

Behind me is a large downspout exhibiting a giant, frozen cascade. The underbelly is almost blue it is so thick – like glacier ice. It looks exactly like an explosion of water, touched by a freezing wand. Stand still, is the command. I have a vague recollection of a fairytale in which a man is turned into a tree. If winter is a water meditation, what is that its telling me through its snow?

I take a deep breath and two black crows slip across the white-out. They cross from right to left, as if they are trying to start over and reread the sky. When they are gone, I put my hand in a pile of snow and brush it easily from the railing where I stand. This is fluffy snow. I know, without thinking, that it is bad for making snowballs but good for easy shoveling. It is the kind of snow that comes down in flakes big enough that when you look up close, you can see their intricate designs. The nature of this is like a night sky full of stars – you can help but wonder about infinity.

But this snow is not like yesterday’s snow. Or even the day before. These weeks have  held wet, heavy slush snow. Dry, tiny balls of snow. The kind that blows away like dust; pings against your windshield as you drive. The kind you know will turn to ice. But what are the names of this snow? Instead of a field guide to birds or trees or wildflowers, I want to identify the terms of this water turned cold, turned into snow.

Champagne powder, corn, slush, firn, snirt, watermelon snow, zastrugi, surface hoar, finger drift, blowing snow, penitentes, ice, packed powder, packing snow, crud, crust, depth hoar.

Some beautiful, some ugly. All curious and fascinating. These are our names for snow. Interestingly, some of the words describe the individual flakes of snow, like depth hoar: a faceted snow crystal, usually poorly or completely unbonded to adjacent crystals, which creates a weak zone in the snowpack. Some describe the snow as its collective. A pillow drift: A snow drift crossing a roadway and usually 3 to 4.5 metres (10–15 feet) in width and 30 cm to 90 cm (1–3 feet) in depth. Or a finger drift: A narrow snow drift (30 cm to 1 metre in width) crossing a roadway. Several finger drifts in succession resemble the fingers of a hand.

My two favorites?

Snirt: the term for snow covered in dirt… and,

Watermelon snow: A snow colored pink by a species of green algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis, it contains a secondary red carotenoid pigment (astaxanthin) in addition to chlorophyll. It thrives in alpine and coastal polar regions and unlike most species of fresh-water algae, it is cryophilic and thrives in freezing water. It was written about as early as Aristotle.

(All information gathered about snow can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_snow)

This time, It's nighttime...

This Sunday's post will be dark because the sun has fallen and I don't have the energy to call it forth. As if I could. As if I could make myself goddess, take hold of the reins, and pull back the globe of the sun. As if could wipe down the lather of its coat to make clouds, let the heat of its racing heart melt this snow.

I would sit, but the wooden bench here is again covered in snow - it's been powdered, crystal-covered, sparkling, lamentably dirty and gray. I could brush it off with my gloved hands, but there's something about making contact with a cold surface that feels self-defeating - so I'll stand against the railing. I like it there better anyway. It's as close to the city as I can get. I suppose I could cross the metal barricade, but it would be a quick view before I slid (probably to my death) down a nearly sheer face of mountain - covered in summer with tall grasses and tiger lilies, now it is burdened with snow. Compressed grass I can't see, and lots and lots of snow.

I approach the railing as if the city is an orchestra and I am the maestro - slowly. I inhale this cold, odorless night. I inhale deeply. I am ready for the show. I know it's a grandiose metaphor but here's the thing - this city at night - it's a grandiose sight. 

In front of me is a magnificent display of lights - lights like symphonic sounds, resounding in the darkness like vibrato, like a crescendo across the darkness - calling out to me in squares of yellow and white. Again, I am in awe - of this quiet city at night. 

Most of the lights are the color of incandescence, though some are red, orange, blue - some flash and race. All along the river, bridges are decorated with giant balls of light like classic wedding tents. And the river is a dark mirror, a veritable crown studded with watery gemstones. Everything - regardless of the cold, or in spite of it - percolates light.

Everything but the sky.

Tonight the sky is black, smeared with violet clouds, and I suddenly can't seem to remember if I have ever seen the stars here before. Maybe there is too much pollution of light. I know I’ve seen the moon - sometimes auburn, sometimes the same color as the building lights - white, yellow, pale. I’ve seen it slivered and fat, and almost full – I’ve even seen it larger than life, as if I’m not in Pittsburgh, but on the African savannah where the equator has the power to magnify what is celestial. But no stars tonight. So I look to the city for a glittery night. Because here I could make a million constellations, draw the gods of myth from man-made stars.

My breath comes out in a small cloud when I pull my scarf away from my face. I imagine this lit city unlit. And then, when I can picture the buildings as a collection of simple black squares, I erase their edges and begin to fill in the dark with scribblings of tree boughs, trunks, a few dead leaves. I try to think about what it would have been like to stand on this mountaintop in the middle of February when there was nothing of man below but the smoke of small chimney fires, tent fires. Smoke as insignificant as the breath that forms at the edges of my lips now. I know that the city of Pittsburgh was only drawn up in the early 1780’s; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette up and running a few years later. But even then, even when the first idea of this city was forming, it had to have been darkness splayed out. And the sky must have stood in for city lights that weren’t even imaginable at that time – at least not in this magnitude.

I think of the word light pollution and what that means. Pollution means a contamination. I think these nightlights are like a horse-blinder, instead. Because nothing we can do - nothing we can possibly do - as miniscule, insignificant humans - will stop those stars from shining. They are a million light years away and a trillion times more powerful than we will ever be. No. All we can do is stop ourselves from seeing them. It’s not a pollution we’ve created, so much as a canopy. We’ve figured out how to hide this panoply. Or we’ve figured out how to make our own. Either way, I love this city at night.

Later, I googled: Mt. Washington, Pittsburgh, PA. I was curious to see what would come up about the view. I was fairly shocked (and happy - giddy even?) to see that an October 2009 edition of the USA Weekend voted this spot - Grandview Avenue, Mt. Washington - as the SECOND most beautiful place in America. The article stated, "The rivers cup downtown's lustrous Golden Triangle, where landmark skyscrapers thrust upward like rockets. At night, lights twinkle on no fewer than 15 bridges. Almost as breathtaking as the vista itself is the urban renewal that made it possible. A century ago, a pall of smoke lay so thick over town that streetlights burned all day." 

Link for complete USA Weekend Article: http://www.usaweekend.com/article/99999999/LIVING01/91015001 

Simple Observations

Gray Gloves

Today, sweet jesus –

today I see the sun!

And it makes the sky

blue - jesus! ink blue,

Pittsburgh bridge blue,

never-too-much sugar in a summer

berry pie blue –

my gloves don’t match the sky today

blue –

Oh, today. Today I will be dramatic as a poet and surrender myself to any degree of cold that dares denigrate my joy, because the sun is shining like a halogen light bulb and I am ready to bask.

Truth be told, it’s only been a few days since I last wrote my blog, but when I woke up to a blue sky and sunshine, I didn’t care what the thermometer read. I wanted get out and stand in the light.

At my spot on the top of the mountain facing the sky, I park my car and get out. There is no one else here and I’m glad of it, because today I want to cuddle up to this place and take a closer look; choose the detail over the distance. And I’d rather not have a bunch of people walking around.

I climb over the concrete barrier that divides the street from the sidewalk. My boots crunch down into the snow and it sounds like the ripping of Velcro from Velcro, a minor side-note like the squeak of styrofoam-against-styrofoam. I think about how much I love metaphor and how difficult it is to draw pictures of sound. I wonder what metaphor will come to me today, what I will make of this detail-drawn day.

Between the street parking and sidewalk that abuts the railing, and thus the edge of the mountain, is a thin strip of snow. All I can think to call this slender space is garden, because it holds holly bushes and a tree. I stand here because I like the feeling of the snow under my books. Besides, on the sidewalk is bulbous ice that looks like a roiling boil frozen over, like a bubble of mucus, the color of whale blubber, of cold lard.

I lift my face and look out at the city because it’s there. The only movement is of trucks and cars sliding by, far away – small as dashes - along the narrow highways gray as old tape. There are no people and no birds; there is no wind. There is nothing but the blue sky. The buildings make clouds out of steam.

But this is the way of the city– so I turn my back on it - and look to the sun.

Eyes closed, I hear the raucous call of scraw, scraw and know it is a crow somewhere dark and glistening, bold scavenger in the cold. Eyes open, I look down and survey where I stand. I’m in a garden. In the summer, this strip is dark with large splinters of mulch. Now it is implacably covered with dirty snow. I squat to get a better look at the berryless male holly, an evergreen without the slender, sharp needles of pine. While the waxy, serrated leaves are usually dark green and monotone, in this sunlight - they are variegated and bright. Each leaf closest to the sidewalk holds a thin dusting of salt, the way my clay pots  hold calcium deposits from the tap. In this sunshine, there is a delicacy of detail I had not noticed before. Even while the sky is an overarching color and the sun is an overriding light, I am caught up in the smaller world of this place.

Along the spine of the wooden bench beside me is a long bumpy mountain range of ice. It has soft ridges like an old mountain, like the Appalachians. But it is not really a mountain - it is an ice line along wood – it is clear water, frozen. The sun on it looks like electricity burning in a filament bulb. See how willing I am to make metaphor of most anything? Again I wonder what this blog post will mean – how I will translate it to something larger.

I scrape away at the snow beneath the base of the holly, as if I’m looking for an answer - because I want to see what lies below. I hope to see something small, insect moving in the secret world of soil. But that’s silly. It’s still freezing, mid-January, still in the depths-of-winter dead (or hiding). There’s nothing here that I can get to but frozen mulch and rock hard ground. A single slice of green unfolds in the form of a hollow wild onion, probably dead now, for all my scraping. For all my trying to find something, it is not what I want. There’s no movement of life – that I can see – here.

Finally I get up to leave. Even though it’s brilliantly sunny, it’s the coldest it’s been in days and I’m beginning to feel it in my fingers and toes.

So now, truth be told, days after going to my spot, I try to write my blog and, like the sunshine, it gives me pause. But not because of its brilliance or illumination, but because of the lack of it. I want a metaphor for that day - for the details I noticed – for the effort of driving there to be inspired. But I can’t seem to scratch through the frozen ground to find anything – not even the smallest sign of life. I went all the way to my place on a superb day of sunshine and yet – nothing. No poignancy, no big meaning. No aha or hallelujah moment with which to end. And you know what? Today that's okay. 

As much as I love metaphors, and drawing conclusions, and finding meaning in the subtleties and the synchronicities of life, sometimes there isn't anything to find.
But there's always a sky. And sometimes it’s gray. That day it was glorious. That day, it was blue.

And sometimes we see the sun. And after long cold days of dark, it makes that one day all the better.

Today that's enough. To feel the sunshine, to see the blue – to draw no other conclusion than:

It makes me happy to stand in the sun, quiet in the snow.