chubby robins and the collective consciousness

Thursday, March 27th, 2014: 3:27 p.m.

"Keep in mind, Puerto Rico is covered in lizards, everywhere." 

I learned this from the girls with orange and turquoise hair, half-shaved heads and Harry Potter scarves. They passed by me as I sat on my rock. 

"I miss Puerto Rico so much." 

I hear you. I know what it means to miss a place so deeply you can feel your stomach lining quiver inside you. What it means to feel displaced in your home country. What it means to feel trapped no matter what you are doing, trapped outside of the only place you want to be. 

Today is warm. It's a nice warm, fifty-four degrees. The kind of warm that makes you feel as though you're wrapped in a wool blanket on the front porch. Not too hot, not too cold. Just warm. 

There's a breeze every once in a while that sweeps through, cooling me off, making me pull into my red jacket. 

I just ran four miles in another part of Schenley. I think my sweat is still drying, making me colder than normal when the breeze comes. 

I had lunch in the Schenley Cafe for the first time today. 

I was deciding between the toasted brie and orange marmalade sandwich and the apple, walnut, blue cheese salad. I was leaning towards the sandwich. I asked the server what she thought. 

"The sandwich is too sweet for me. I like my sandwiches more savory." 

I got the salad. It was $7.25. It was delicious. 

But, next week, my final stop at Schenley Park for this project, I'll celebrate with the sandwich. 

What's better than a gourmet grilled cheese? Not a whole lot. 

Today, even though it's warm, the sun is not out and the leaves no longer have the glow they did last week. They are their same dull browns and grays. Fingers crossed for sun next week. 

On the way into the park today, I saw a moss-like growth on a rock I passed. 

It was the same color as the walls of my old bedroom--my room in the last home I shared with Mom. I couldn't decide exactly what shade of green I wanted. My dad painted five different shades across my walls in strips. I almost left it that way but eventually decided on something called Dragon's Lair. 

I love collecting paint swatches. I have bags of them at home. Whenever I go with my dad to the hardware store, I sneak to the paint aisles and grab handfuls of my favorite colors. I make cards out of them sometimes. If the name of a color reminds me of someone, I'll send it to them in the mail. I love the paint colors for their names--Dragonfruit, Clay Ridge, Peony Blush, Canyon Mist. This reminds me of Siobhan's comparison of the forest colors to the Maybelline foundation display. We bring nature into our lives in so many ways, even in the most consumeristic settings. 

As I continued walking, I saw small flags pinned into the ground. 

One said, "Angela." 

The others were blank. I wondered what they were for. They seemed like miniature attempts at conquering territory, claiming land. They remind me of E.B. White's short essay from the July 26, 1969 New Yorker, "Moon Landing"--the essay that caused me to fall in love with him:

"The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all."

Brilliant. 

I heard some rustling and to my right, I saw three robins moving the dried, brown leaves and searching. 

They'd move the leaves, then listen. Move, then listen. Move, snatch a worm, suck it up. The robins were pretty chubby. I wondered how they got that way on a diet that consisted primarily of worms. Then, I thought, proportionally, this would be like us getting chubby on sub sandwiches. And it all made sense. 

I saw a few green sprouts trying to come up. Daffodils? This is the first green growth I've seen all season.

The leaves rustle easily in the wind today even without the help of the robins. I really wonder when new buds will come to the trees. Probably after this project is over, and I will have to come back anyway to see them. 

My dad just sent me this book of tree leaves in the mail to help me identify the trees near my spot. Thanks, Dad! :) 

I will have to wait until the leaves come so I can do so.

I am thinking of showing my place to my boyfriend, Will, and my best friend, Nat, when they come to visit me next month. It might finally be time to share. 

I think as my final attempt at identification for this project, I will try to figure out what my rock is made of--may be hard to do, but I will try. 

There are so many runners in the park. I wonder what their day jobs are that allow them this blissful afternoon in Schenley. I'm sure some are students, like me. Even though they are strangers, I feel connected to them through running. We both understand the primal need to push our bodies and lose ourselves in what they can do. We both seek that rush and thrill. 

I am starting to become nostalgic for this place already. It has become a comfort, a ritual, a constant this semester. I feel like I belong to it somehow in a distant, yet symbiotic, way. It is so hard to leave a place you love. It breaks you, sends a hairline fissure through who you are. It is a cruel separation. 

But, I am perhaps the only one in this relationship who knows that I keep coming back. The trees don't know. The squirrels, even if they have seen me before, will not remember. The streams with their freezing-then-thawing-then-freezing this winter, like a pulse in the woods, have no recollection of this girl in the red jacket, this perpetual rock-sitter. 

Or, maybe, they know it all. Maybe, in the collective consciousness of all living things, they wait for me, find comfort in the ritual, too. Maybe, that's just too-wishful thinking. :) Maybe, that's just human-centric and self-centered. 

One afternoon in South Africa, I went to brunch with the man, Kevin, whose farm I was staying on. We ate at a delicious place called Ile de Pain. Kevin was a photographer and had struck a deal with the owner of the restaurant--Kevin took and printed large-scale photographs of the bakers at work to hang on the restaurant's walls and, in return, received a free loaf of bread every week. Kevin and I sat outside with bread and scrambled eggs topped with fresh pesto, shaved parmesan and arugula. 

We had just gone to a pranayama (extension of the life force, extension of the breath) yoga class. I was thinking about yoga and why we do it. At that point, yoga had seemed to me like a self-centered endeavor. I felt a bit selfish focusing only on how I felt, what my breath was like, where my center was. Shouldn't I be spending that time with other people, interacting with them and not just putting all my attention towards how to make myself better? 

"No," Kevin said. "In the collective consciousness of the world, you affect everybody. Even if you can't see it, your negative energy becomes a part of everybody else's energy. Nothing is separate from anything else. You need to be in a good place so that those around you can feed off that and also reach a good place. You need to take care of yourself."

I think that may be why forests are such peaceful places. The natural energy that the trees, plants, rocks and animals give off is so steady. It's steady from their years of history and growth, from their lack of self-consciousness and their ability to just be. They are the ultimate levelers in the collective consciousness and, as humans, we feed off that wholesome stability. As Kevin also told me: "The flower doesn't try to be anything. The flower just is." 

At any rate, I must leave now for the day. Those things that pull me back to life outside this spot--the ticking parking meter, the unwritten lesson plans, the books that must be read--now flood back in. 

Maybe, next week, the trees will blush with green. 
Maybe, I shouldn't wish for something as specific as green. 
Maybe, I am just lucky to know I am coming back.

Maggie