A city park with emerald lawns, studded with low stepped pyramids--altars? They look Mayan, though flatter. The lawns have trash and broken glass though. A shame, it's a pretty place.

So I start cleaning up. It becomes my daily habit. And as the park slowly gets cleaner, the regular gardeners (who rotate between about six parks I think) get used to me and the cleaner conditions and raise their own standards. Start replanting and seriously fixing things. I started a feedback loop!

The vegetarian alligators are happier too. The broken glass in particular scratched their bellies and feet, and the trash made their wounds infect.

One day, I meet a gardener while I'm crawling around like a gator, combing the grass for broken glass. Find his glasses and shirt and wallet instead?

He asks "Why are you crawling? It's not safe!"

I say "It's safe now, without the broken glass. And it's FUN!"

I'm given a cooked baby alligator, from the park. I'm as much a vegetarian as the gators are, but I'm supposed to eat it! At least a token amount. Or it'll go to waste, is that their excuse for forcing me?

The skin is like chicken but drier, leathery. I examine it a long time. As last, slit it open and look in. Very loose, air pockets in cheeks. Just skin, air, bone, and a little meat. Nothing too horrible yet...

The skin peels off whole, slowly. I examine it--toward the paws and tail, I find tough rough spots inside the skin, where the infections from all that broken glass left scars... ugh. I don't want to ingest this... this record of illness and suffering!

Wait! I don't have to do what gardeners tell me, do I? They didn't get this park cleaned up!

NOTES

• Clean up the broken glass, slowly improve the park = deal with childhood trauma bit by bit.
• Must inspect and eat a scarred baby alligator = I must assimilate the ugly truth about my childhood--and I just learned that my worst allegations about my parents' unreliability were short of the truth.
• Scars = Lately I've developed a limp as well as cramping and pain--almost certainly from the stress of unearthing early childhood trauma. But maybe, just maybe, I don't have to chew this dead meat any more.

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