before earth
If you want to compost your vegetables in Greenpoint, there’s only one place to do it, at the North Brooklyn Compost Project. They’ll take your greens and give you fresh compost for your plants, but you have to volunteer once per summer in exchange. Last summer I managed to wheedle my way out of volunteering, but this year, someone trapped me, and I found myself headed to the compost pile to give my time on one of those hot, humid mornings where the air sits on your arms and weighs you down, the kind of a day that make you hate New York. I tried not to be grumpy about it, even when my roommate fled to the beach. It was only a two hour shift after all.
The compost project was set up in a busy corner of the park, between the dog run, the farmer’s market, and the farm share. It was 11 am, and the corner was crowded with the early risers, people that I rarely see in the neighborhood on saturdays. I stood there next to the steaming piles of decay and looked at the farm share across the path. There, all the couples were collecting their groceries, looking as if they’d been awake for hours. They lined up in bright domesticity, smiling large at each other, holding their dogs on leashes, picking out bunches of strawberries and plump vegetables, handed a fistful of flowers to take home at the end, packing it all onto their bicycles and riding home together. I was on the other side of the path, in what seemed like a different universe, breathing in the smell of rot and not-yet dirt, feeling as if I’d been single for a hundred years. Mine was the world where the colors were all brown and earth-wormy, and muted. Divided from the greens and vibrant reds and bright couples buying flowers. I looked wistfully over to the other side of the path. This sucked.
“I feel as if that is the life side of the park and we’re stuck on the death side,” I said to the woman next to me.
“Oh no!” she said, her face lighting up. “I grew up on a farm. Compost is as much a part of it as those fruits over there! It’s all the cycle of life and growth and rebirth. They need us!” I thought it over, looking at the woman, trying to think of a response. “Still, their side of the path does smell better,” she said.
I sighed. “That it does.”
...
Though of course, there are never just two sides to any path. Even pretty ones in the park on a summer saturday.
The compost project was set up in a busy corner of the park, between the dog run, the farmer’s market, and the farm share. It was 11 am, and the corner was crowded with the early risers, people that I rarely see in the neighborhood on saturdays. I stood there next to the steaming piles of decay and looked at the farm share across the path. There, all the couples were collecting their groceries, looking as if they’d been awake for hours. They lined up in bright domesticity, smiling large at each other, holding their dogs on leashes, picking out bunches of strawberries and plump vegetables, handed a fistful of flowers to take home at the end, packing it all onto their bicycles and riding home together. I was on the other side of the path, in what seemed like a different universe, breathing in the smell of rot and not-yet dirt, feeling as if I’d been single for a hundred years. Mine was the world where the colors were all brown and earth-wormy, and muted. Divided from the greens and vibrant reds and bright couples buying flowers. I looked wistfully over to the other side of the path. This sucked.
“I feel as if that is the life side of the park and we’re stuck on the death side,” I said to the woman next to me.
“Oh no!” she said, her face lighting up. “I grew up on a farm. Compost is as much a part of it as those fruits over there! It’s all the cycle of life and growth and rebirth. They need us!” I thought it over, looking at the woman, trying to think of a response. “Still, their side of the path does smell better,” she said.
I sighed. “That it does.”
...
Though of course, there are never just two sides to any path. Even pretty ones in the park on a summer saturday.
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