< city markings >
Feb-2022
How close can I get to nature while staying in the city, without losing my sense of place and purpose, without being so marked by the city that I lose my wilderness, here where garish orange dots the vista? I have been inside too long, too long without friends and purpose, without anyone to tell me what color are my eyes under a cloudy sky or over a frozen ravine?
Walking away from the water, I see city property, plastic neon orange objects nestled into nature: buoys behind the dam, a plastic “fence” leaned up against an oak, and in front of a pine, four orange and white striped cones with caution tape veils, the word “CAPITAL” written on each object’s base.
![](http://arielfintushel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/city.gif)
What’s the function of these official objects? They seem to have outlived their purpose. They seem to me as wild as what they half-heartedly protect. This tree could fall, the dam bust. The yellow caution tape is for me in my own disaster, a disaster in which, having held it together for so long, I let nature graft itself on me without fighting it, cracking and peeling, chipping, and that’s where the moss grows greenest.