Apartment Lot, Day 1

Monday, September 7, 2009, 6:04pm

The first day I visit my wild spot, it has been raining.  When I make the trek down the stairs from my living room to my backyard lot, the ground is largely dry but for wet patches underneath cars, dampened mounds of brown leaves, and the moist, branch-like outlines of asphalt cracks.  I have my back to a dark red brick wall fading to brown in the corner, the adjacent wall beside me a brighter red, crayon-box brick or burnt sienna, textured ridges the exact look of plasticine--to the point where I might reach out and reshape these blocks into spheres and pyramids.  This wall is covered in ivy, rain-speckled and chameleoned multiple shades of green--the colors of ripe watermelon.  Some of the leaves have rain-battered bruises, the same hue as the brick beneath them, as if they're aging slowly, becoming the brick they inhabit.  I reach out my hand, touch my index finger to one leaf, one water droplet--watch it change shape on the leaf's veined surface as a part of it sticks to my skin, leaving half of itself behind.  Half of this droplet is now on my fingertip, and I stare at it--clear and oblong, the shape of an egg.  I can see the small, sloping ridges of my fingerprint through the droplet, as if it's not even there, a lens designed for examining parts of myself, details I don't normally see.  I place the droplet on my tongue and it seems to evaporate, too small to be tasted or felt for more than a second, but colossal enough to be noticed.

I come here regularly.  This parking lot, small and sloped behind my Pittsburgh apartment, has four parking spaces and a cracked grey floor.  Nothing ever happens here that is noticed, nothing other than me and my camera, photographing my shoes and my eyes, the brick and the sky and the concrete.  Nothing but that.  Every wall, every building or house I can see from here is brick--I'm counting sixteen structures--across the ivy-clad wall at my left, yards in front of me, between buildings, pressed to my back, at my right, in the distance--Shadyside Presbytarian the largest.  I never noticed before how much brick, and to think of counting each individual slab, each block fitted carefully and precisely with the others, pieced and puzzled together like dentistry or clockwork.

Nature is not like that; it is strewn, careless, sprawling, spitting--unthinking of its appearance, surroundings, precision, purpose.  It is and it does, and it does not ask to be looked at, but regardless garners our attention, our focus.  It is undemanding, but all-encompassing.

Needle-sized raindrops land on my laptop screen.  I wipe them off with my forearm, keep writing as they keep appearing, glistening multi-colored like confetti sparkles.  I think how strange it is to have a computer outdoors, to view it like it's part of the scenery, or pretend it's not even here--just a conduit for thoughts to pass through, or a resting place, like the cup of a leaf, collecting rain water.