I was on the M16 bus last Friday—always a challenging scenario for me, especially since there’s a champion nose picker who sometimes gets on at 7th Avenue—when I looked up and saw something that immediately set my mind at ease. It was the back of a giant forest green dump truck-type vehicle, emblazoned with the word “PINE” in white stencil-y letters. It was snowing, flakes all swirly-twirly and filling up the little frame of outside that I could see from inside.
Why the heck should that make me so happy? Those scary marketers who determine that fast food restaurants should be orange because it makes you not only not notice what you eat but eat it faster probably would have a hypothesis. Was I reassured by the “lo-fi”-ness of the stencil font? It’s true that green is my favorite color as of, like, forever. I don’t know, but I think it’s a mistake for me to think about it too much, ‘cause when it happens again I don’t want to stop it by overanalyzing. I guess it’s like a visual pacifier, and everyone has their own personal Pine.
Some Pines are more universal, and can have a calming effect on a wide variety of people. Unless you’re a cat hater, how could this not make you feel like you have fuzzy socks on:
And other times, a Pine can be more, well, complicated. Just before I woke up this morning, I was dreaming about a giant pomegranate. Each individual seed contained a kitten, just about to be born. The idea of a purring, stirring, mythic pomegranate made me very, very happy—especially since I picked it up and looked closely inside one of the seeds, which contained a little black kitten with a Mohawk. Storybook, right? But just then somebody’s mother came along and, with a wicked look in her eye, popped 2 of the seed-kittens in her mouth. And no, it wasn’t Persephone. I’m pretty sure it was the mother of a childhood friend who once told everyone I ate like an elephant.
This one's a complicated Pine--despite the title, it may as well be called "Bad Feeling."
An aural pacifier, courtesy of High Llamas:
I just learned last week that the seeds of the pomegranate are called "arils"...great new word for me :-)
ReplyDeleteWow! And you got to use it so soon, too! (Unless you've been throwing it into your convos all week ; )
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