Green – stream of consciousness

Green, obviously, is the colour of life. From my window here, most of the world is green. Maybe not most – there’s a lot of sky, but of the ground I can see, most of it is covered in grass. The trees are bare, but now, in March, there’s a shiver of green, a whisper that there will be leaves. Ivy, of course, dull, dark green, there all winter, and the laurels – which I hate. All that green is a miracle, a massive factory turning sunlight into sugar. That is the colour of life, out there. And death, too, of course – though that mold that disgusts us is just more life. We privilege human life – there’s a hierarchy of life forms, starting with us, working down through animals we can identify with, like dogs and lions and elephants and deer, and ending up somewhere down the bottom with molds and fungi and jellyfish – because no matter how much you can admire them and use them as a metaphor, you can’t feel that fondness for a jellyfish that you feel for a kitten or a puppy, or even a baby calf, all wobbly legs and big brown eyes. It’s easier to identify with something with eyes. Aliens are green. That’s a given. Little green men. And it’s the colour of the uncanny, the elfin, the leprechaun. This most fundamental colour, this background shade, mundane, disregarded, is the colour of the strangest things of all.

For Linda G’ Hill’s Saturday Stream of Consciousness. A 5 minute flow of words, unedited. Today, of course, is the greenest day of all. Happy St Patrick’s Day to everyone who is Irish, loves Ireland, finds their feet tapping to an Irish tune, or their heart swaying to an Irish poet’s words.