Crayons

A lot of thoughts were going through my head as I hitched a ride for the umpteenth time out of La Montanita. The wheels in my mind started turning, as always, to the tune of Bedouin Soundclash "Im on a rocky road, heading down off the mountait slope..." as we rounded the bend and headed toward civilization.

As a kid, I remember getting frustrated with crayons. Id take a break from coloring the pages of my Disney book to eat some Dungaroos (as long as Mommy didnt intercept me first with a bag of baby carrots) and return to a torture chamber: On the table before me lay more than 8 different shades of green (insert scary movie sound effects)...and silly me had left the grass half-painted. Forest green, Jungle green, Lime green, Pleasantville-AYSO-Soccer-Jersey green...how would I ever know the right crayon to use??! WHYYY was it necessary to have so many different green crayons?


And so for years (as 50 cent so eloquently advised)I have been "patiently waiting". Patiently waiting for the day I would come to use all 8 greens of the Crayola pack. The day I would understand WHY my childhood was plagued with nearly-perfect Mickey paintings with just a smear of unmatching green in every field.

Bumping down the mountainside in El Salvador many years and many more crayons later, I yet again have come to curse Crayola. The hills in front of me have clearly been ambushed by those devil page-painters. Not only has each and every shade of green been used until demolishment (is that a word?), but the shades have even been melted down to liquid form and mixed to create EVEN MORE greens. I find myself mesmerized (which I promise you is not an easy feat clinging to the back of a pick up, holding my skirt down, squinting through dust and bouncing voilently) looking at the hills ahead. Each range of mountains is a different green. The layer closest me that lines the road side is Banana Leave Green, the next row in line screams Maguey Plant Green, and that behind reads Rolling Hills Green. There are speckles of Iguana Green and splashes of Bola green. If you look at it all together you get Rejuvinating Green and if you just close your eyes and feel it it feigns Fresco Green.

My point is, I had come to realize why 8 shades of green had been created. The most frustrating part was that for years I cried over those 8 shades, all for the wrong reason. Yes my poor Disney book was scarred with color deviations...but my complaining would get the best of me.

Looking at the mountainside, I realized the problem was not the abundance of green crayons but the lack there of.

I thought again back to my childhood. I remembered watching my older sister receive a painting leasson from one of our tenants. Learning by example, she painted the canvas of a flourishing landscape. I pictured myself doing that now. How I wished I could re-create the sight before me. Preserve it forever. Not only the way the fruit trees spring from the bountiful corn fields, but the way they sway silently on the mountainside. The way the coconuts sound when they break free of their ties and tumbles along the ground below. The pungent smell of podrido mangos and the prickley feel of the maguey points.

I often think, what am I going to do when I can no see and feel this every morning? When I no longer can jump in the back of a random car and show up fashionably late and sexy-windy-frizzy-pickup-truck-hair later at a reunion. When I can no longer go to sleep to the lull of rain pounding on my tin roof and wake up to the sweet chirps of roosters in the morning.

What if it all ends someday?

I blame Crayola.