If you are the sum of your senses, then you are green – the dominant color of this particular spot.
You are a thick gray-white of marine layer above.
You are the rapid hum, drum and flap of five kinds of bird wing sounds.
You are a breath taken over and over again.
The purple horn of a morning glory.
The pink flowers on a spent batch of thyme.
Fuzzy tomato leaves stretching out for more surface to feed flexing and bulbous fruit.
A pipe-like chirp from an unseen sparrow.
Crows plotting take-overs with counting calls in the distance.
Squirrels manic in the pine trees, racing along trunks and branches, barking and chattering as if to sucker the dog into a sassy exchange.
A light mist falling on paperback book covers.
And somewhere hidden – stars beyond.
And an ocean for sure – growling lines of foam from wind pulses across its expanse.
The bitter remnants of light roast coffee and cream on the edges of the tongue.
Cool air across the tip of the nose – confusing sounds with an attempt to smell.
And memory – confounded memory of everything related to plants you potted, seeds you sprouted, spores you watched bubble up as mushroom fruits.
And others – they put things into the ground that surrounds you.
Do the landscape designers ever walk past and feel charmed with their own memories of craft?
Memory demanding attention – fabricating meaning out of 10,000 things and associations that prove a fruitless mastery to the ego.
“I know what that is. I can name it. I associate it with some importance to the character living this life.”
The association spins into complexity and meaning deduced in a millisecond.
My self-important story cast onto a landscape that could care less.
What a farce.
But oh how entertaining.
Every sense perception conspiring to keep the animal and its story animated in a grand cosplay obsession.
Absolutely stunning how the sense-beast takes it all in and makes it improbably personal.
Everything – all of it – a foreign language translated poorly into a narrative logical to the self character.
But illogical to all else.