The Parallels of my Environment: Why I have Hope on Earth Day
I grew up going all the way around
factories and up warehouses, empty rotting land staked out unevenly for massive industrial development, creating a chessboard of paths for me.
These factories were crested by curled fences, the only sense that something existed that was able to diverge from the straight and narrow.
Going down side streets towards the train station
Train rides long and narrow, I in between. Steel Plants and Trucking Hubs to my left and right. Even when I was moving, I had to stay within the parallels of my environment.
This chess of life had me down as a rook
No room for perpendicularity, but then I discovered what it was like to see
You see, in the winters when the heaps of waste visible from my window train seat get covered in snow, they look like mountains
There’s this sense of shifting, eyes playing tricks on you , the angles of the sun reflecting off
the angles of my eyes into the angles of the glass windows
Co-creating zigzagging realities .
When I spoke to people, they spoke in a world governed by the rules of language, another imperfect reflection of the world with
words falling parallel to each other, line by line
but when I was in nature:
Seeing light, sensing wind, and feeling water- directions were limitless.
Seeing allowed me to escape the language of circumscription.
I think in images so I speak in metaphors
Precisely because they represent an absence of the reality humanity has created
This facet of language that is as expansive as the possibilities we can dream up
Realizing that anything can begin to shift if we began to see without words
I believe in a future where our society can begin to respect, to reflect
our air, water, land, and each other.
It’s this vision, this seeing, that allows me to escape the parallels of our environment.