Watching the birds (II)
8/24/04 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alasanonI bought my sandwich and walked the block, stepping over the usual crowd of panhandlers on the corner, and sought my tiny piece of green in the middle of all this gray.
...
Okay, it's not all gray. The city partially funded a renovation of this area last year, so there are a few buildings that have been stuccoed and painted various colours that would look less out of place in the Southwest. Not here, with our usual year-round clouds, perpetual rainstorms, and people with tempers and attitudes to match. What business of ours is a lively terra cotta or turquoise? Some people in my office seem to feel that those lovely colours are threats. Those same people scowl at my little patch of grass when they walk by, thinking that it just provides a soft place for the bums to lie on. They don't seem to recognize that the police traffic this area constantly, and if someone is there for more than a half-hour or so they boot them off of the grass with a warning not to loiter. It's not really public property, you see. I'm always very careful about how long I'm there, though the cops are gentler with a well-dressed woman than with a man who hasn't bathed in several days.
The grass that afternoon was perfect, soft and dry and welcoming. I sat down, slipped off my pumps and relaxed, wiggling my toes in the sunshine.
...
Okay, it's not all gray. The city partially funded a renovation of this area last year, so there are a few buildings that have been stuccoed and painted various colours that would look less out of place in the Southwest. Not here, with our usual year-round clouds, perpetual rainstorms, and people with tempers and attitudes to match. What business of ours is a lively terra cotta or turquoise? Some people in my office seem to feel that those lovely colours are threats. Those same people scowl at my little patch of grass when they walk by, thinking that it just provides a soft place for the bums to lie on. They don't seem to recognize that the police traffic this area constantly, and if someone is there for more than a half-hour or so they boot them off of the grass with a warning not to loiter. It's not really public property, you see. I'm always very careful about how long I'm there, though the cops are gentler with a well-dressed woman than with a man who hasn't bathed in several days.
The grass that afternoon was perfect, soft and dry and welcoming. I sat down, slipped off my pumps and relaxed, wiggling my toes in the sunshine.
