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there are different kinds of dirty. there's dirty like how you feel inside on 4 hours of sleep, after hours and hours and hours of driving, dirty like going past tired into wired and still remaining vertical late into the evening. there's dirty like the late winter/early spring grey-brown dust coating the road, the grass, your hair, your mucus membranes and your lunch. there’s dirty like the view of miles and miles of chain stores along miles of highway littered with failed rolluptherimtowin takeout coffee cups and cigarette butts. dirty like those massive trucks jacked up high above their already-huge wheels, sucking back fuel and roaring down the road with one passenger inside at a time, a trucks that say I Deserve To Drive This Big, Fast and Loud. dirty like a province fueled by the tar sands, an ecological nightmare scary enough to make Stephen King envious. dirty like oil and gas companies decorating their websites with images of wind turbines and solar panels and that hideously over-and-misused word, Sustainability, while poisoning native communities in the north with toxic tailings in the rivers. dirty like working for big business in this province – oh no, not directly, you work for Resource Management, but scratch the surface and governmental management ain’t that different from corporation exploitation, even if you do save a few trees from burning down each summer. (remember, you’re saving a crop, not a forest. that out there is a plantation.) dirty like eating at those takeout places for a few days on your way out of town and then pitching the plastic into the bin ‘cause you know they don’t recycle that stuff here and anyways recycling probably takes too much fossil fuel energy to be truly comforting if we really knew the exact facts on that.
but some dirt makes you feel clean. like the dirt on your jeans from rolling on the ground with the dog, from cuddling the dog in your lap while you both peer out the mud spattered windshield, or the dust on your arms from carrying the dog upstairs to bed when she’s too tuckered to open her eyes let alone climb the steps with wobbly puppy legs. there’s dirt in the north with some trees left, dirt by the side of the waskahigan river, dirt with your seedlings coming up in early may, dirt smelling like earth like soil like the finest freshest thing in the world making you get down on your knees and praise with both nostrils and your open inhaling lungs. some dirt you can still find here, which is why you keep coming back here even as sometimes it make your whole body cringe. i’ve rubbed that dirt on my face more than once, just to get back to clean.
4:08 AM
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