WELCOME TO THE HOUSEHOLD, ESMERALDA!
Sometimes life gets more real all the time.
Take plants as an example: I have a specific thing about plants. I might only have a few, I'm not the sort who has a yen to turn my apartment into a greenhouse, but many people have only two or three children, and nobody makes value judgments about their "kid's thumb" or anything like that. I've known people who literally swim in their own personal rainforest, and for them this is a penchant that can only be described as "vegetative machismo." For me, however, there's nothing macho about my love for greenery. Many people have love for a different kind of greenery: some call it green, others imbue their love with terms like "economics." Still others have a love for what they dub "green." But we'll not get into that at this time.
Suffice it to say that I'm one of those people who likes to mythologize about the consciousness of plants. Nothing's proven, but I too suspect the world of fauna is besotten with consciousness. It might not be the same kind of consciousness we as humans enjoy, but it's consciousness just the same, and for that alone, it should be respected. Moreover, I also believe that the consciousness of plants deeply resides in symbiotic relationship with our own consciousness. The ancients believed this, and though they've been wrong on many points, I suspect they're right on the money on that belief.
Once, I remember seeing a magazine supplement photograph of a prominent Dallas-area poet. He was holding onto the bark of a tree and telling the reporter something about life on Mars. He was greeted in public as being some kind of eccentric, mainly because mainstream journalists really can't comprehend the mind of a poet no matter how hard they try, but I also couldn't help but wonder if he, too, holds a deep and soulful respect for the amplifying power of the vegetative world?
At that time, I was, for all intents and purposes, a mystic. I had a mystical understanding of things that often went beyond the boundaries of rational logic. Sometimes my ideas worked; most of the time they remained, and were later proven to be, fantasies. But after seeing that photograph, I began to go outside my apartment and place my hand on the bark of the huge pecan rising high above the patio. Was it my imagination? Or did I feel a kind of energy pulsing into me? Strangely, I do remember, I did feel restored, enervated, almost reclaimed. After that point, I began to contemplate the tree, enjoy its leaves, watch as it went into winter dormancy. I'd water it, too, sometimes even going so far as to turn up my stereo so the tree could "hear" the music of Mozart.
Go ahead. Laugh at that last statement: That plants respond to certain types of music is an established scientific fact. Scientists have utilized EEG--electroencephalograph, the same machine that follows human and animal brain waves--to track a plant's nervous trajectory. They learned that plants, just like humans, respond to calming, soothing music differently than they would to agitating, relentless music. And, of course, everybody's heard the story about the scientist who tried eating a salad in the room he was conducting an EEG experiment on a plant. He'd take a bite and the EEG's graph would go wild: Apparently, the plant "understood" that a "murder" of its kind was in progress. I suppose the same thing could be said for Mozart: If you tried "eating" one of his girlfriends in front of him, he'd go wild and start writing for Megadeath--200 years before the advent of thrash metal. Maybe Motorhead. Yeah. Motorhead sounds better here.
I've got a close friend who has a huge lizard he named Tree. Tree's got a cage full of branches, and Tree will freeze on the branches and actually turn the same color and take the same patterning of the branches. Hence, the name, Tree. But what if Tree was doing something more than simply camoflaging himself? What if he was communing with the vegetative world? What if this was part of his feeding program, something we just don't know about? My friend used to ask those questions himself. Of course, this same friend had a huge parrot he'd named Bird. Go figure.
But we're getting off the point. Everyone has had the distinct experience that the trees were communicating, right? I remember standing in a grove of Juniper trees and listening to the breeze stroke their branches as they bobbed slowly up and down. I felt as if I was in the center of a conclave of philosophers. The sense I had was of utter peace. The Juniper Conclave, as it came to be called in my imagination, asked me to join in, but I didn't have anything profound to say. But it takes years to understand the language of philosophy. It takes years to comprehend the concepts. Why shouldn't it take years to reach a stage of consciousness development that enables us to speak with the most populous form of life on the planet? What else are those plants doing? Just standing there?
The huge Mulberry outside my window is perhaps the most accomplished visual artist I've ever known. That old Mulberry makes shadow drawings on my wall that dwarf the accomplishments of Picasso, and Picasso is hard to beat.
Consequently, although I've never revealed this before--that's right, you saw it here first!--I consider the houseplants I for which I care sentient beings. This, as I said, may merely be imaginary, but it does help me to cultivate (interesting word, eh?) a clearer understanding of my sense of floral husbandry. It's easier to think about caring for a sentient being than it is to care for an inantimate object. It would be interesting to see what would happen were the majority of men in this world to take this axiom to heart when dealing with their wives and lovers.
Yes, I talk to my plants.
In fact, I name them. When my mother gave me a huge ivy for my front window, I immediately began to feel love for the creature, and almost automatically, I named the ivy, well, Planty. Planty obviously likes to be looked at: Planty's a little vain. But whenever I'm in the same room as Planty's domain, I do glance at her quite a bit. Yes, I've wallowed in the Land of Planty many times.
In my bedroom, I have an airplane plant. Actually, there are several individual plants gathered together in a huge pot beside my bed. What to call them? It's easy! I named them The Wright Brothers. Get it? Airplane plant. In other words, I named this one after the place the Wright Brothers first built the plane that conquered Kitty Hawk.
One clipping fell off the huge ivy in my front room. I had a really hard time getting it to grow: Now she's a hydrophonic. I call her Sorrow. She's always wallowing in her tears. So to speak.
Finally, last week, I was at my area Whole Foods Groceries, happy to discover beautiful Aloe Veras on sale for only $5.95. I snatched up what seemed to me the happiest one and got it home. The name was simple: Esmeralda. Kind of a secret name, the sort of "pet" name we writers use for things like pens or special coffee mugs. Taking it into my bathroom, where I have a great, sunny window-ledge, I positioned Esmeralda in such a way that this sweet, bracingly green beauty could get the "rain" it needs: Whenever I take a shower, whenever I am cleansing my body and washing away all the soot and smog of daily life in the urban environment, when I'm clearing out all the day's tensions with happy wallops of spray, the succulent Esmeralda gets a light sprinkling of splashing, shooting liquid. And wow! Is she ever happy!
Still the question begs: What sort of music do Esmeralda and I listen to when we're sharing conscious space together? I did think of Mozart--mainly because that's what some experts believe nurtures newborn babies best. But Esmeralda is no babe in the woods. She's a full grown woman, and I have heard her roar. Laughing a little at myself, then, musing over the hippy-dippy quality of my least-shared personal lives, I decided I wanted Esmeralda to be nurtured on a healthy diet of really supercalifragilistic hippy music: The Mamas and Papas, It's A Beautiful Day, Jefferson Airplane. After a good, nourishing shower, I imagine Esmeralda is quite happy listening to "Dedicated To The One I Love," and "White Bird" and "Won't You Try (Saturday Afternoon)?"
The succulent name of Esmeralda the Aloe Vera may be a bit difficult to say repeatedly and as fast as possible, but it seems to have stuck to her. And while I am online--online is like a huge plant with root systems and stems and branches and even trunks spanning everywhere on earth and even into space--I would like to use the energy of light and electricity to welcome Esmeralda the Aloe Vera to the household.
Sure. Soon my friends will comment: Say "Hello" to Esmeralda. I'll tell them this: Gladly. I'll spill a little on her for you.
Take plants as an example: I have a specific thing about plants. I might only have a few, I'm not the sort who has a yen to turn my apartment into a greenhouse, but many people have only two or three children, and nobody makes value judgments about their "kid's thumb" or anything like that. I've known people who literally swim in their own personal rainforest, and for them this is a penchant that can only be described as "vegetative machismo." For me, however, there's nothing macho about my love for greenery. Many people have love for a different kind of greenery: some call it green, others imbue their love with terms like "economics." Still others have a love for what they dub "green." But we'll not get into that at this time.
Suffice it to say that I'm one of those people who likes to mythologize about the consciousness of plants. Nothing's proven, but I too suspect the world of fauna is besotten with consciousness. It might not be the same kind of consciousness we as humans enjoy, but it's consciousness just the same, and for that alone, it should be respected. Moreover, I also believe that the consciousness of plants deeply resides in symbiotic relationship with our own consciousness. The ancients believed this, and though they've been wrong on many points, I suspect they're right on the money on that belief.
Once, I remember seeing a magazine supplement photograph of a prominent Dallas-area poet. He was holding onto the bark of a tree and telling the reporter something about life on Mars. He was greeted in public as being some kind of eccentric, mainly because mainstream journalists really can't comprehend the mind of a poet no matter how hard they try, but I also couldn't help but wonder if he, too, holds a deep and soulful respect for the amplifying power of the vegetative world?
At that time, I was, for all intents and purposes, a mystic. I had a mystical understanding of things that often went beyond the boundaries of rational logic. Sometimes my ideas worked; most of the time they remained, and were later proven to be, fantasies. But after seeing that photograph, I began to go outside my apartment and place my hand on the bark of the huge pecan rising high above the patio. Was it my imagination? Or did I feel a kind of energy pulsing into me? Strangely, I do remember, I did feel restored, enervated, almost reclaimed. After that point, I began to contemplate the tree, enjoy its leaves, watch as it went into winter dormancy. I'd water it, too, sometimes even going so far as to turn up my stereo so the tree could "hear" the music of Mozart.
Go ahead. Laugh at that last statement: That plants respond to certain types of music is an established scientific fact. Scientists have utilized EEG--electroencephalograph, the same machine that follows human and animal brain waves--to track a plant's nervous trajectory. They learned that plants, just like humans, respond to calming, soothing music differently than they would to agitating, relentless music. And, of course, everybody's heard the story about the scientist who tried eating a salad in the room he was conducting an EEG experiment on a plant. He'd take a bite and the EEG's graph would go wild: Apparently, the plant "understood" that a "murder" of its kind was in progress. I suppose the same thing could be said for Mozart: If you tried "eating" one of his girlfriends in front of him, he'd go wild and start writing for Megadeath--200 years before the advent of thrash metal. Maybe Motorhead. Yeah. Motorhead sounds better here.
I've got a close friend who has a huge lizard he named Tree. Tree's got a cage full of branches, and Tree will freeze on the branches and actually turn the same color and take the same patterning of the branches. Hence, the name, Tree. But what if Tree was doing something more than simply camoflaging himself? What if he was communing with the vegetative world? What if this was part of his feeding program, something we just don't know about? My friend used to ask those questions himself. Of course, this same friend had a huge parrot he'd named Bird. Go figure.
But we're getting off the point. Everyone has had the distinct experience that the trees were communicating, right? I remember standing in a grove of Juniper trees and listening to the breeze stroke their branches as they bobbed slowly up and down. I felt as if I was in the center of a conclave of philosophers. The sense I had was of utter peace. The Juniper Conclave, as it came to be called in my imagination, asked me to join in, but I didn't have anything profound to say. But it takes years to understand the language of philosophy. It takes years to comprehend the concepts. Why shouldn't it take years to reach a stage of consciousness development that enables us to speak with the most populous form of life on the planet? What else are those plants doing? Just standing there?
The huge Mulberry outside my window is perhaps the most accomplished visual artist I've ever known. That old Mulberry makes shadow drawings on my wall that dwarf the accomplishments of Picasso, and Picasso is hard to beat.
Consequently, although I've never revealed this before--that's right, you saw it here first!--I consider the houseplants I for which I care sentient beings. This, as I said, may merely be imaginary, but it does help me to cultivate (interesting word, eh?) a clearer understanding of my sense of floral husbandry. It's easier to think about caring for a sentient being than it is to care for an inantimate object. It would be interesting to see what would happen were the majority of men in this world to take this axiom to heart when dealing with their wives and lovers.
Yes, I talk to my plants.
In fact, I name them. When my mother gave me a huge ivy for my front window, I immediately began to feel love for the creature, and almost automatically, I named the ivy, well, Planty. Planty obviously likes to be looked at: Planty's a little vain. But whenever I'm in the same room as Planty's domain, I do glance at her quite a bit. Yes, I've wallowed in the Land of Planty many times.
In my bedroom, I have an airplane plant. Actually, there are several individual plants gathered together in a huge pot beside my bed. What to call them? It's easy! I named them The Wright Brothers. Get it? Airplane plant. In other words, I named this one after the place the Wright Brothers first built the plane that conquered Kitty Hawk.
One clipping fell off the huge ivy in my front room. I had a really hard time getting it to grow: Now she's a hydrophonic. I call her Sorrow. She's always wallowing in her tears. So to speak.
Finally, last week, I was at my area Whole Foods Groceries, happy to discover beautiful Aloe Veras on sale for only $5.95. I snatched up what seemed to me the happiest one and got it home. The name was simple: Esmeralda. Kind of a secret name, the sort of "pet" name we writers use for things like pens or special coffee mugs. Taking it into my bathroom, where I have a great, sunny window-ledge, I positioned Esmeralda in such a way that this sweet, bracingly green beauty could get the "rain" it needs: Whenever I take a shower, whenever I am cleansing my body and washing away all the soot and smog of daily life in the urban environment, when I'm clearing out all the day's tensions with happy wallops of spray, the succulent Esmeralda gets a light sprinkling of splashing, shooting liquid. And wow! Is she ever happy!
Still the question begs: What sort of music do Esmeralda and I listen to when we're sharing conscious space together? I did think of Mozart--mainly because that's what some experts believe nurtures newborn babies best. But Esmeralda is no babe in the woods. She's a full grown woman, and I have heard her roar. Laughing a little at myself, then, musing over the hippy-dippy quality of my least-shared personal lives, I decided I wanted Esmeralda to be nurtured on a healthy diet of really supercalifragilistic hippy music: The Mamas and Papas, It's A Beautiful Day, Jefferson Airplane. After a good, nourishing shower, I imagine Esmeralda is quite happy listening to "Dedicated To The One I Love," and "White Bird" and "Won't You Try (Saturday Afternoon)?"
The succulent name of Esmeralda the Aloe Vera may be a bit difficult to say repeatedly and as fast as possible, but it seems to have stuck to her. And while I am online--online is like a huge plant with root systems and stems and branches and even trunks spanning everywhere on earth and even into space--I would like to use the energy of light and electricity to welcome Esmeralda the Aloe Vera to the household.
Sure. Soon my friends will comment: Say "Hello" to Esmeralda. I'll tell them this: Gladly. I'll spill a little on her for you.
posted by Faceshaker at 8:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home