Kabuki & Cottonfields

He dashed out in front of me, onto his stage, wearing his orange sash and long white coat and carrying a somewhat over-sized fan, hiding his face. His long purposeful coat impinged his walk, forcing him to make tiny, quite comical steps like a Kabuki performer. The moment was one of pure theatre.

But he was not a Kabuki performer. He was not even Japanese. When the 8:45am sunlight highlighted him appropriately one could see he was a school crossing attendant, a “Lolly Pop” man, with council waistcoat with reflector orange, and a long white coat to keep warm. And his over-sized fan was the big, round, orange sign on an elongated pole that read ‘STOP’ in black.

I long for the Kabuki performer; but he was gone in an instant, never to return.

***

This morning I picked a whole bale of cotton. Not from a physical field, for although I’m sure somewhere in this country they grow cotton I have never seen it, as here we are reduced to wheat, canola, sunflowers, and rotation crops.

I saw a cottonfield early this morning - up in the sky - thousands of very small fluffy white clouds, strew across the dawn blue sky, billowing off until they formed a wall of cotton extending to the horizon edges. I picked each with my eyes, amazed at the expanse of the pattern in the sky, and imagined the fluff of each in my hand. I imagined sewing so many garments from this cotton - magical garments, and wished that all nations could pick cotton from the sky and other crops, so that no one went without.