My immersion exercise was to march in the NYC Halloween parade.  You would understand if you have seen it first-hand.

The parade is what I would call radioactive green: part demonstration, part march, and 50% very vocal, flamboyant BGLSA.  Lots of chants, lots of drums, lots of slogans, lots of cross-dressers, lots of cowboys in ass-less chaps.

Not my element.  I don't like crowds, nor dressing up, and have never marched in a parade before.  Undecided on the ass-less chaps.

That having been said, I loved the march.

It was a clash of green (parade) and blue (police presence), and probably overly so on the latter due to the terrorist attack earlier in the day.  The colors and the flow of the parade reminded me of how the water changes colors when sunlight strikes the ocean's surface, sometimes resulting in green, and other times turning it quite blue.

I enjoyed the feeling of being part of a movement, feeling the crowd surge and stop, not by sight, but by sensing it.  At times I closed my eyes just to feel and hear and sense and smell, but not see.  There was a groundswell of emotion in the marchers and crowd alike, driven in part by our collective desire not to succumb to the effects of terrorism, but rather doing the opposite - being in the open, in public, in crowds.  That was powerful - I can see how control of power like that can be abused towards the wrong ends.  I could also see how green sentiments and leadership in this context is a deep responsibility - I feel like orange, red, blue mindsets and leadership don't bear the same moral and social responsibility as green, which seems self-evident given how green is defined.  There is also so much raw emotion in green.

I felt pride being on the streets after the terrorist attack and while the parade had the unique aura of contained volatility, the event remained surprisingly civil despite the key protagonists: namely the police, and the vocal/demonstrative BGLSA community.

I have resolved to march again, but next time it will be for something personal, not for an event or as an exercise, but for a cause.  And while I personally do not champion nor have any attachment to the BGLSA cause, I was nonetheless jealous in some manner because they had a cause to march for.

I am grateful that this experience served as a visceral reminder of how deeply I enjoy going green, and of how much pride and purpose is in green.  It is easy to lose touch with certain aspects of oneself when life develops depth and new dimensions.  And for years, I have self-medicated by telling myself that there would always be time for green and championing causes later in life.  But that type of thinking is just a story to tell ourselves and a band-aid, not a solution.  Sometimes we just need a little nudge and this was mine.

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And I am quite pleased that at the end of the night, Ghost had thankfully refrained from mauling anyone.  Definitely flashing a little red whenever one resolves to take a german shepherd into a crowd like that.

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