I was still wondering how the dickens a dove goes about getting burnished when I entered the ring of ancient oaks on the grounds of Research Commons for morning qigong.
You are probably familiar with this ring of hoary trees if hoary is the word I want. It sits atop the hill that overlooks the post office on Alexander. I don't know how long this oaken ring has been here but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are probably all that remains of a Druid grove or college. It has that look.
As I walked to the western end of the circle, the better to face the east and greet the rising sun, I noticed the open space was filled with ranunculi, and many of them buttercups, and I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester that my old school chum, Mumps, and I were enrolled in BIOL 4120, the Botany of Flowering Plants.
This class was required for a degree in biology and it had been taught by Dr. Fowler for as long as that ring of oak trees had been in the Triangle. Fowler isn't his real name. I've changed his name because that's what people do when they write about other people. Not sure why.
You are probably familiar with this ring of hoary trees if hoary is the word I want. It sits atop the hill that overlooks the post office on Alexander. I don't know how long this oaken ring has been here but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are probably all that remains of a Druid grove or college. It has that look.
As I walked to the western end of the circle, the better to face the east and greet the rising sun, I noticed the open space was filled with ranunculi, and many of them buttercups, and I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester that my old school chum, Mumps, and I were enrolled in BIOL 4120, the Botany of Flowering Plants.
This class was required for a degree in biology and it had been taught by Dr. Fowler for as long as that ring of oak trees had been in the Triangle. Fowler isn't his real name. I've changed his name because that's what people do when they write about other people. Not sure why.
This doctor was one of those be-speckled and bedraggled birds featured in so many stories of arcadia. He eccentricated himself by wearing the same elbow-patched tweed sport coat every day, and the jacket was accessorized with the same tie. It was no ordinary traditional tie but a knitted species that stopped abruptly above the belt as though cut square with scissors.
One beautiful spring Tuesday this Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official sketchbooks, for accurate drawings were part of our final grade.
One beautiful spring Tuesday this Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official sketchbooks, for accurate drawings were part of our final grade.
As I remember the sky was blue, the wind still, the sunshine warm and we had no sooner entered an open meadow when Mumps let out a "Eureka!" Turns out he had almost stepped on a flower that I called a shepherd's purse and he called a capsula bursa pastoris. He was like that--sticky mind. Anything he read or heard simply stuck. My mind--slippery. Still is.
If you were an innocent bystander, you would have marveled because it was the work of an instant for Mumps and I to sprawl on the grass and began sketching stamens and pistles like Billy Oh.
Now on these fine spring days the mind is calm and the spirit peaceful and the whole package is one perfectly suited to seeking enlightenment. And that is just what we were doing. The limbic systems worked overtime instructing the endocrine glands to decant this and that in good measure, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
If you were an innocent bystander, you would have marveled because it was the work of an instant for Mumps and I to sprawl on the grass and began sketching stamens and pistles like Billy Oh.
Now on these fine spring days the mind is calm and the spirit peaceful and the whole package is one perfectly suited to seeking enlightenment. And that is just what we were doing. The limbic systems worked overtime instructing the endocrine glands to decant this and that in good measure, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
The result of all this chemical stimulation was consciousness elevated to that of rats with metal electrodes inserted into the nucleus accumbens and septal nuclei. And it was in this state of enlightenment that the striatum realized that it was time to leg it to lab or risk wearing the dunce cap for late arrival. We got a move on.
Now, this Dr. Folwer had a peculiar method of lecturing to lab students. He turned his back to us while scribbling on the chalkboard and babbling away on everything from dicotyledons to ovaries and just when you least expected it, he would dervish around and point a bony, arthritic finger at the victim and demand an answer to the question of the day.
So here we were, seated on lab stools and doing our best to take notes and not laugh out loud at what seemed to be the most trivial drivel we'd ever heard. You are aware, it goes without saying, that it wasn't really drivel but when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems not just drivel but absolute rot. It was this way with us.
Then, with the surprising immediacy of Judgement Day, the professor swirled around like a tornado and pointed the gnarled digit directly at Mumps, catching him right between the eyes, at point-blank range too. We never heard the question because the blow knocked James off his stool and onto the floor where he exploded with a guffaw that sounded like a steam boiler coming apart at the seams. It disrupted the class not a little.
I would love to remember how that situation was resolved because a story is never complete without a happy ending, and a happy ending is evident because we somehow got those degrees, but this particular story has no end. Bertie Wooster says that the difficult part about telling a story is knowing where to begin but for me, it's knowing where to end. Maybe that's because I don't really like endings. I like the kind of stories that go on forever.
I never enjoyed a college class as much as that taught by Dr. Fowler and I never enjoyed a college classmate as much as Mumps. Higher education comes in many forms and most of them are unexpected. That's life they say.
Now, this Dr. Folwer had a peculiar method of lecturing to lab students. He turned his back to us while scribbling on the chalkboard and babbling away on everything from dicotyledons to ovaries and just when you least expected it, he would dervish around and point a bony, arthritic finger at the victim and demand an answer to the question of the day.
So here we were, seated on lab stools and doing our best to take notes and not laugh out loud at what seemed to be the most trivial drivel we'd ever heard. You are aware, it goes without saying, that it wasn't really drivel but when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems not just drivel but absolute rot. It was this way with us.
Then, with the surprising immediacy of Judgement Day, the professor swirled around like a tornado and pointed the gnarled digit directly at Mumps, catching him right between the eyes, at point-blank range too. We never heard the question because the blow knocked James off his stool and onto the floor where he exploded with a guffaw that sounded like a steam boiler coming apart at the seams. It disrupted the class not a little.
I would love to remember how that situation was resolved because a story is never complete without a happy ending, and a happy ending is evident because we somehow got those degrees, but this particular story has no end. Bertie Wooster says that the difficult part about telling a story is knowing where to begin but for me, it's knowing where to end. Maybe that's because I don't really like endings. I like the kind of stories that go on forever.
I never enjoyed a college class as much as that taught by Dr. Fowler and I never enjoyed a college classmate as much as Mumps. Higher education comes in many forms and most of them are unexpected. That's life they say.