Nature called. Or rather, I was forced to call it; I am following this book designed to enhance my creativity and my task of the week (well, one of them) was to find five rocks that I found colorful and/or interesting. Another was to find five flowers/leaves and take them home to press between wax paper, keeping them forever or until my grandkids needed something to talk about and/or destroy. Sounds easy enough, right? Try it on the streets of Bensonhurst.

I started looking for the rocks right away, promptly finding a pile of dog shit and what seemed to be a turquoise-colored stone-but on closer inspection, turned out to be a wad of chewing gum, which, like the dog shit, I passed over. I also found a beat-up thank you card with a beige kitten in a flower pot on the cover, the inside reading "Enclosed is $30 to show my appreciation..." Now why couldn't I find the $30? I didn't fare much better with the flower/leaves. The only thing in bloom on 86th Street was a piece of tar and a broken bike chain. Sure, there were flowers on the corner -- at the outdoor flower stand, but since I live on one end of the strip and work on the other, passing the shop every day, I didn't think it wise to swipe any. Anyway purchasing them would be cheating, since the purpose of the exercise was "abundance" and finding creative gems that were free of charge.

So I headed to Prospect Park. Plenty of material there, right? Wrong. My first attempt collecting rocks led to confusion. There was an abundance of rocks, but the book said to look for unique rocks. They're rocks. I guessed they were all unique because, technically, they were new to me. So I started grabbing them all. "This is stupid," I soon thought, and decided to have a seat. I knew I'd be in for the long haul. Nestled beneath a tree, I ended up carefully sifting through a handful of dirt and listening to a nasal bastard yelling at someone on the Long Meadow "this is not the place for your helmet...don't be putting that crap here." Ahh, the sun and its soothing qualities. Meanwhile, I took my time and carefully collected my rocks, wrapping them in my cigarette pack cellophane. Finding leaves and flowers proved nearly impossible in mid-March. The first piece of foliage I tried to collect was the buds off a branch that whapped me squarely in the head as I was walking past. The innards were still lime green and it wouldn't budge. I also felt I was doing something illegal, wrenching the only living green stuff off the tree in April. There were a few specks of yellow flowering plants. But I hate yellow. It was way too early for flowers; I couldn't go just ripping out what little dared to bloom so early (save for a single daffodil I found on the path). Looking on the bright side, I figured this task, proving harder than it should, did force me to use my creativity even more ferociously. I resigned myself to collecting leaves, which were mainly brown and crumbling. The only colorful ones ended up being a shard of a trash bag and a McDonald's wrapper. "I'm probably bringing home aphids," I thought, chucking the leaves/grass/debris I put into my plastic bag. Overall there was little sign of (non-human) life in the park that day. Unless, of course, we got a microscope. Then you can find an entire zoo in your bath towel. I always pick the greatest time to collect life-- when everything is dead, dying, and/or dried up and rotting.

At least it beats the time I tried to "get back to nature" by paying a visit to the Botanical Gardens in the throes of a February snow storm. Although the rocks and leaves I collected from my Prospect Park jaunt are definitely lacking, I did get some interesting photos of Endive Archway, some trees on a hill that looked like an ideal place to find a dead body, and a boot. Also a half of a coconut shell.

Arriving home, my boyfriend cried out in woe. "These aren't rocks!" he exclaimed, viewing the first part of my booty, "These are pebbles! Wait," he sighed, spying a bigger hunk, "now THIS is a rock." THAT was a zipper head. He also got mad at me for picking up trash: I showed him the razor I found with the rocks, which proved the danger of the exercise to him. As far as the flowers and leaves went, most of the haul fell apart when I took them out of my carrying sack (or had fallen to pieces on the trip home). But, with my boyfriend's help, I did manage to smash the daffodil, a dried-out thing that looked like a spine, and some crab grass between the pages of "The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: The Secret Murders of Milwaukee's Jeffrey Dahmer."

Weeks later, the crab grass had broken and turned to dust, the dried-out thing that looked like a spine still appeared dried-out and spine-like (it now graces a picture frame on my kitchen table), and the daffodil had leaked a sickly brown substance, sticking some of the book's pages together.

All in all, I would say a trek back to nature--especially in Brooklyn--teaches a valuable lesson. You've got to go a lot further than the entrance to Prospect Park. And it would be a hell of a lot wiser to search for things in bloom when things are actually in bloom..