Openings

A misconception coming into this class: nature doesn't care about me (or you, he, she, it, they). 

Perhaps “care,” is still not the right word, but to be sure, nature responds to me (you, he, she it, they).

***

In Cameroon for a semester of studying abroad, I was treated royally. During lunch, my class and I ate in the teacher’s cafeteria where we were served by waitresses. Outside, Cameroonian students stopped to get glimpses of us.

Visiting a Palm oil plant, we were treated to lunch in the owner’s  home: a manicured blue stucco ranch. Unable to find a trash can to throw away my wrapped feminine product, I suspected one behind the swinging door from which waitresses (maids? servants?) busily emerged with Fanta and sliced pineapples.

I pushed into the kitchen and met twenty confused then accommodating eyes. I asked for a trashcan.

This was Francophone Cameroon, said the once again confused eyes. Then I held it up.

There was no trash can in that kitchen, I admitted to myself, long after I handed that thing to a young man who took it with a bow.

Sometimes, like today, I wonder about what happened when I turned my back on them, pleased and horrified at the same time. 

But here’s the thing, I know what happened, or at least I think I know. Whatever the exact details, the transaction has too much ugliness to count.

I can still hear the way that door swung behind me, how it swung back in forth between the room we sat, and the kitchen where they stood. The swings lessened in momentum until the passageway was once again resealed.

***

At Nine Mile the overflow valve held up those swaths of toilet paper, where should I put this, it asked.

***

Tonight, I look up to the night sky. I am sad. 

Bogard said we've lost the ability to see the dimmest of stars, which exist in the furthest dimension. And I can’t help but wallow in this shining metaphor, how we are losing our ability to see into the furthest wells of our dimensions.

***

The air is crisp, sharp, and sure of itself. It hugs me here at my corner, holds me in place. I feel as if I am sitting in a car seat, strapped in. 

And perhaps this is what I've been missing, this feeling of nature's hold: its infiniteness, it’s coddling, my infancy.

I hear vehicles. Their motors come and go from unseen horizons of sound. A constant buzz hums in the air. It’s an engine, but on a larger scale. It’s an engine that approximates all this city’s sounds, as if all far off noises rise to its hovering valves, and out comes the discernible reminder of man kind: echos between voice and steel.

***

The Robitussin box, which I wrote about earlier in a winter blog, teeters at the ledge of the rain drain near my feet. I walk to the dumpster, dropping it in.

For a moment, I feel like I've made a difference.

Then that guilt comes lapping around  an unseen corner in my mind--courtesy of my Catholic imprints-- reminding me that my effort is in vain: instead of polluting the waterways, I've contributed to the landfill.

As I reopen the dumpster lid,  in my mind’s eye appears that swinging Cameroonian door.

I look at the soft box of Robitussin, and consider my options.