Green Is the Meaning

Went to the DeCordova this weekend with my friend S, where I discovered something very interesting:  (Click to enlarge.)

Oh!  It's "alfombra," not "aleombra."  Oh!

That changes everything.  That means the inscription is, "For my mother, who taught me to fly without a carpet."

By the way, it may have escaped your notice, but there is only one way I could have taken this picture.  (Click to enlarge.)

Yes, that's right.  I walked out to the end, in my L. L. Bean mary janes, on my same innately graceless, relatively low-tech prosthetic leg.  Probably the first time in six years I've done that, certainly the first time I felt confident enough to try since I had my leg amputated almost four years ago.

Yes, I got there.

We walked all over the park, up and down hills, on and off the beaten, or paved, path.  We came upon a beautiful metal sculpture called Lupus, by John Raimondi.

As I pulled out my camera again, I explained to S that sometimes I take pictures just to record a pattern, or a particular color gradient.  I told her how this camera has some odd algorithms or remnants of trauma or something which makes it translate colors unpredictably, bright yellow as chartreuse so deeply engreened, for lack of a better word, that I can't even correct it in PhotoShop.  So I never really know what I'm going to get, but it's always worth a try.  (Click to enlarge.) 

The title of this post is what always pops into my head whenever I am drawn into green, be it living greenery or or a range of happy greennesses, as I was Saturday walking up and down hills, into woods, into the secrets of a beech, its weeping branches in full leaf like a spangled velvet tent, or confidently along the pink stone edge of my favorite installation, all the way to its green-and-rock-fringed edge, and as I was standing still, staring deep into the complex verdigris on this bronze sculpture.

The title comes from this guy named Scott who sat next to me in the eleventh grade Algebra II class I nearly flunked out of passive-aggressive rebellion and boredom, way back in the back row.  He and his friend Scott who sat in front of him and had sun-blond, curly ringlets like a Botticelli imagining, were both supposed to be stoners, marijuana-addled wastrels for those too young to know the term, but I think they ended up getting far better grades than I did.

The Scott who sat next to me used to tapestry this saying, "Green Is the Meaning," all over everything in ballpoint ink, the faded blue cloth cover of his three-ring binder, the yellow paper of a PeeChee folder, his backpack, his jeans jacket.  He probably wrote it in my yearbook, but I lost all those years ago.  Maybe I wrote it in his to show I liked him -- just liked, not liked, you understand.

I never knew where he got this phrase, if it was just something he made up to be funny or sincerely meant to be profound.  All I ever knew he really cared about were his friendship with the other Scott and his very pretty girlfriend whom all of us expected would end up his wife.

I never saw any of those people after high school, and between head injury, decades of protracted stress, and now middle age, there's very little I remember from high school at all.  But I remember this, every time I am drawn into green.

And, you know, sometimes I really do believe it is the meaning.

Thanks, Scott, for pointing that out.

Comments

[The Goldfish]

Well done with your walk Sara. It looks like a lovely place and I hope you're not too sore after.

Most of my favourite places are very green places, places when you literally can't see the wood for the trees. Such wonderful light and such a lot of oxygen. Oh I must get out of the house this week.

By the way, you've been tagged.

[Sara]

Thank you, Goldfish! It is a lovely place, one of my very favorites in the whole world, and fortunately the gods (or imps) of chafing and pinching were asleep that day, so I was not the slightest bit sore afterward, just mosquito-bitten.

Yes, the oxygen. It's funny you would use that word, because S and I were talking about what our personal sacred places -- all outdoors -- do for us, and one of the words we used to describe how we feel whenever we come home after visiting one was "oxygenated." I wish you a jaunt every bit as restorative.

Tagged, huh? I shall check it out. That makes three in about ten days; yes, they pile up because I am not whippet-prompt about these things. No excuses, just distractions. :) I will attend to all of them presently, though. First, to fulfill another promise, I have to talk some more about shoes.

Cheers!

[Christopher Bell]

Yay for tractiony shoes!

[Sara]

Yes, tractiony shoes are one of the very best things in life, although this particular success over this dry weekend was less about traction and more about mastering dainty little ball-and-toe steps on a somewhat clumsy prosthetic device along the edge of a not sheer but certainly steep enough precipice.

Also, I must note that so far my L. L. Bean mary janes, though fabulous in oh so many ways, have proven just a little bit less tractiony on wet surfaces than my Tevas (also purchased for me by my true love at L. L. Bean, incidentally). Still, they are perfectly good when it's not raining, and it was not raining Saturday.

[The Goldfish]

I guess if you think about it, two of most people's favourite places would be green places like woods and the seashore. Both of them, for different reasons, have high levels of ozone present. They're also very beautiful, but I guess oxygen does play a significant role. Doesn't explain why people like to climb mountains though... ;-)

[Sara]

Seriously! I just watched this morning as Rasmussen won the most recent stage of the Tour de France, which ended at the top of a mountain. It was very green up there, at least the mountainsides were green, but just watching the three leaders pounding their way up, up, up that Alp, into the thin, thin air, in unrelieved sunshine and in competition so close I feared their pedals would entangle, only to have Rasmussen actually shoot ahead in the last mile, all while I reclined plumply on the pale yellow chintz-covered loveseat in my air-conditioned living room, made me gasp and reach for chocolate.

Of course, people who can do that stuff have the power to self-oxygenate in ways sofa cushions such as myself do not. And then they get those "endorphin" thingies.

I can't imagine their way is actually more fun than my way, but it sure is impressive to watch.