GRASS
I have lived around grasses all my life. They have been here for millions of years. I have absorbed their sublime beauty and calming influence. However the thousands of grasses that exist in the world are unnameable to me. Sure I recognise some of them individually. "Oh, it's this oaty one." "Oh, it's that frilly one." But I have no name for them. They blur into the catch-all of “grass…”
Different grasses are always there. Everywhere. By brick walls in the suburb. In meadows inhabited by pylons stalking the horizon. In the edges of bridges that peep at motorways. In alleyways by highstreets. In the house cracks of crumbly brick doorsteps. Their scent fills the streets in warm tarmac evenings. I know grasshoppers will be leaping in long grass if nature’s given a chance on the peripheries of towns. And I know there’s grass with juicy thin stems in most places: tiny green sceptres you can pluck from the earth and which your fingernail can indent easily. There’s no real reason to do that last thing - but things happen when men and women daydream.
I have sat on grasses since a child. In front gardens bordered by powdery roses. Yellow and orange ideally, but pink petals offer the fragrance best. I’ve sat on grass in back gardens with hosepipes and leaky taps quietly taking a back seat in the scene. I’ve sat on grass in school playing fields at school fairs. I’ve sat on grass on school trips to the Tower of London being told about Anne Boleyn getting her head cut off and invited to put my head on the block. On day trips to Mountfitchet Castle where some medieval guy was stuck in a barrel of nails and rolled down a hill. On a school trip somewhere they had peacocks and I had a sandwich and lost my hat. I’ve done a ton of grass, mate.
However, I have no name for the grasses I’ve come into contact with other than: "grass."
The innuit have several names for different kinds of snow, apparently.
Most of us have made no similar effort with grass.
They all look the same to us.
We’re botanical bigots…
A while back I sort of got into botany. Stamens, sepals, rhizomes, nodes - that whole scene that I imagine rocks your world too. But I never really followed it through. It was a temporary interest before other stuff replaced it. Occasionally, I wish I could make a fuckload of cash and quit my job and study grass full time. That’d be one of the key diversions I think I’d enjoy if I could be a man who potters about all day. That and occasionally popping into WHSmith. That is my dream if I become a millionaire.
The broadcaster Rob Rinder thinks I’m a lunatic when I tell him this is my fantasy life.
He can’t think of anything more boring than looking at grass. That’s fair enough. It’s not for everyone. But everything can be boring until you really look at it. Imagine the dude who first invented a microscope and discovered a world of atoms and organisms previously hidden? Parallel universes we were oblivious to literally existed in our world. Grass is not banal shit. It’s a universe of competing civilisations fighting for space on earth. They have their own history of empires and war in tandem to our own. The chronicles of their struggle goes back further than our own. And the map is still being reclaimed and lost and fought over. An endless war of seeds and growth and decay and death fought yard by yard and inch by inch. Give a seed an opening and they’ll storm it and set up an outpost.
Anyway, during the brief botanical phase mentioned above, by studying the anatomy of grass and learning about individual species and varieties, I felt I could speak a foreign language in a land where I had dwelled all my life but never made the effort to learn the local tongue. In a strange way I felt like I could breathe better. A new world opened up to me and a previously hidden population that doesn’t appear in any census was suddenly visible everywhere.
As I say: it’s not for everyone.
Some people like to watch fims instead of look at weeds. Which I accept is perfectly reasonable.
But don’t act like grass is nothing.
One day we’ll be underground and all we’ll be able to see are its roots.
White anaemic knots of tangled hairy fingers pushing through crumbs of earth to comb your still growing hair.
So take a chance to check out the green stuff above while you can.
It’s pretty good.