GREEN
A SHADE OF INTROSPECTION BY SABREENA SALEEM
ONE SUMMER NIGHT a boy whom I call Book Bae (if you’re reading this, hi, my friends and I called you book bae all summer) took me to a Chicago beach at midnight so we could clear our minds, smoke a little, and do some writing (still very cute, btw). I was in a funk that night and most of the summer, and I felt like I was just floating through time, going with the flow - out of my body and out of my mind (That wasn’t the weed. That’s depression). Anyway, I had a bad case of writer’s block and Book Bae thought a relaxing night at the beach would help. When I was in college, I took a non-fiction writing workshop, and we learned a lot of techniques to help us get started on writing & journaling. So to get some thoughts flowing, I decided to pick a word and make a list of the next word I thought of, what that word made me think of, and so on. That actually led me nowhere that night so I laid and stared at the sky and wallowed in my misery. Book Bae was like ummm ok. And though it was pitch black, the first word I could think of was green.
Now I fucking hate green. Unless it’s like a forest or olive or army green. Those are actually some of my favorite colors. I have a lot of clothing in those colors. But I guess when I think of green, I think of a very bright, obnoxious Crayola green. But actually, not many things are that color. Like, I can't think of one. I hate in nonetheless. If you ask me if I like green I’m gonna tell you i fucking hate it. I digress.
So when I wrote GREEN in my notebook, here’s what followed:
Envy
Money
Power
Christmas
Trees
Luck
Light
Energy
Yes
Go
Confidence
Ugly
Natural
Olives
Money
Envy
So, here I am now, on a beautiful veranda in Karachi, Pakistan, far from where I was on that dark summer night both mentally and physically, and I'm revisiting my journal page about green. And I had a thought.
My list started out dark. I'm not sure why I first thought of envy. Maybe I envied anyone who didn't have fucking writer's block or who didn't feel the way I did. It was cynical. Money, power, Christmas (which isn't warm & fuzzy for me). But then suddenly it blossomed into light, energy, and it climaxed with yes and go. But naturally, as any high does, it descended back into ugliness. It don't know why I thought of olives, but then we were right back where we started with "money" and "envy." The cycle was complete.
Ok, I sound like I’m on some pseudo-deep bullshit, and I definitely am, but hear me out. What if me sitting on the pitch black beach smoking Portland green was the gloomy starting point for ascension, just like my list? And what if me sitting here, right now, in the beautiful Karachi sun overlooking dirt roads and exotic greenery, is me at a climax, after which I will tumble downward into confusion and then some inevitable fall? What if it starts all over again? What if I can't escape green? What if I hate green because it forces me to make sense of something so paradoxical in my mind, something so up and down, that I’d rather avoid the thought all together and thus, hate green?
Or maybe I’m just bored.
I don’t know. Either way, I guess what I’m trying to say is I think I might be green. Every god damn miserable and lovely shade of it.
