SEEING RED

The other day I was stopped at a red light, behind a red Cadillac plastered with angry bumper stickers. I seemed funny to me that the hot-headed driver would cover all that shiny candy apple enamel with what was on his mind. But people want to be heard.
Me, too.
So here I am plastering what’s on my mind on the shiny screen of your laptop.
The only thing on my mind these days is red. I love red. It’s my favorite color. Red. Since I can remember it’s been red. Certainly there’s been flirtations with yellow, then orange. I couldn’t stay far from red for long. So I’m back to red and I’m sticking to it.
Yes, I’m a hot-head, too.
And nothing gets my dander up more than the abuse of red. I mean the theft of red by the Right. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the color red represented the left, the far left. Our enemies, the commies. I had no problem with them using my favorite color for their flag because my leanings were decidedly left.
But I don’t understand when or why the Right absconded with red. I have a vague memory of Nancy Reagan appearing in red after the “Evil Empire” fell. I have a bigger and vaguer memory of it liberating red from the left and starting a fashion trend. Like the scalps of fallen settlers red became a sign of some sort of victory, the blood of our bloodless victory. I think that’s when I started wearing blue.
But I still love red. So I will try no to think about my favorite color being stolen, too much. After all, it’s a free country. And all evidence points to the fact that red belongs to no one.
Not even me, a red lover.
Not even the crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) which is possessed by red and raving swarms of bees, not hot-headed, but happy and busy.





I

TIME AND MATERIALS

“ Time waits for no one,” it is said, or at least sung.
I like to imagine Time at the bus stop, lighting one more cigarette, impatiently looking up the street for the bus which is not necessarily late but which keeps Time waiting. I guess it’s a rather grim image of Time to hold, considering I am that beleaguered bus, stuck in traffic, loaded with passengers, just ever so slightly late on all accounts.
“ But late, goddamn it. Late.”
Maybe I should imagine Time as a bookish girl at the same bus stop,reading a very thick Russian novel, lost in her reading, totally forgetting about the bus or waiting. Maybe that’s what Mick Jagger meant.
Time doesn’t wait because it don’t need to; it’s time.
It’s only me turning time into a character waiting for a bus.
Turning it into a commodity to be spent, used. Doled out for this or that. As something to run out of, or want more of.
“I wish I had more time.”
But it’s May . And I have very little time it seems. Every moment seems so preciously usable. Time has boiled down to days, hours, minutes in which to get things done.Time has become as material as the flats of annuals to be planted, the bags of fertilizer to be spread and the packets of seeds to be sown. Time is the miles travelled, the hours slept, the days worked.
It seems a bit abusive to whittle grandiose time down to packets, bags and flats. To measure it, dole it out. To slice it and dice it until there isn’t a moment to spare. It’s not Time that’s in a rush. Time’s not impatient; I am. I am always trying to be 10 steps ahead of myself. I think I need to be this time of year. But do I?
That’s why I decided to sit in my parked truck and sing:
“ Ti-i-i-ime is on my side.
Yes, it is.”