Twigs

Al Candelario
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

The thing about dirt and soil or any kind of mushy thing is that you can draw shapes in them with a stick most of the time.

You could be standing ankle deep in the soil of a backyard garden in Chicago, and I could draw a line in the dirt, starting at your right toe and drag the stick behind me as I walk straight West for miles.

Someone else could come up to you with another stick and draw another line, starting at your left foot instead and walk behind you in a twisted, winding path that also takes them far away from you.

More people keep coming with their own sticks and sooner or later you see all these individual lines beginning at your feet and all going in their own unique directions, and you’ll look outward and see amazing patterns formed by the lines as they stretch out around you.

Now that you’ve seen all those lines at your feet you can’t unsee all the patterns they created as they weave in and out of each other. You can follow any one line and within a few steps you might step out of that dirt, or those lines may fade as the rain washes them away, but the image you have of them will always be there.

All those lines that could be followed and the different places they could take you. Most of the time it’s us who decide consciously or otherwise to follow lines in the dirt and if it’s not dirt we’re trudging through but it happens to be shit instead, no matter where we are we can look down and then look out and remember the lines. If we need to, we can find a new line that looks interesting and follow it instead.

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Al Candelario

Engineer, sometimes writer and comedy nerd. Hope-filled, and eating things with cheese on them. http://workwith.ac

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