Green thumb

I can’t remember the last time I planted something.

I bought Tori Amos’ new album a month or three ago. It came with a DVD (still unwatched) and a packet of flower seeds. The packet stayed in my car console until last week, on a whim, I pulled out a clay pot, filled it full of planting soil and planted the seeds. The instructions were simple: put the pot in direct sunlight and keep the soil moist until the plants are well established.

The seeds looked unimpressive, almost like so much fluff. But, lo and behold, I have at least a dozen little sprouts in the pot. What will be interesting is to see what happens when they go from wispy sprouts into real plants. Will they survive? Will they bloom? It’s all a little exciting, actually, to see something created out of nothing. It almost boggles the mind. We have a bamboo sprout on the windowsill in our house and all it’s “planted” in is a bed of rocks covered with water. No soil whatsoever. And, yet, the thing has doubled in size since we first acquired it. Matter from “nothingness.” The very essence of the air is being turned into leaves and stems and all of the associated cell organelles. Truly amazing, n’est-ce pas?

I’m reading Saturday by Ian McEwan, who also wrote Atonement and Amsterdam. For my money, the most skilled author writing today. I read his pages with my mouth dangling down somewhere near the floor, in awe of his skill, his knowledge, his power of observation, his insight…everything…and yet at the same time I’m caught up in his tale. It’s not a matter of him being so good that you’re aware of his talent and thus removed from the story. That’s just me trying to learn from someone else.

I want to be him when I grow up.

In other news, today I am wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe. Why, you might well ask? Damned if I know. The hallway where I work is populated mostly with female employees, and every now and then they dream up some Friday weirdness. Sometimes it’s shirts of a specific color, or wear-a-hat day. Today is, apparently, no-same-shoe day. I play along, but I never quite get the point! Sometimes our group leader awards prizes for creativity, so I guess there’s that. When she announces these schemes, though, I always make sure she’s going to be here on the appointed day. That she’s not just going along the hallway saying: Wear weird shit on Friday and then not showing up to work that day.