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.