He Had The World

Part 1

Dan

Some discount botany from the sciences. I'm told often that I have it easy, that I chose the way to claim a doctorate without hard work. I'm told it makes me less of a man, working with our vaguely symbiotic partners in life as opposed to inventing yet another smartphone or hopelessly working on the prospect of a Mars colony I most likely would not see in my lifetime. But I don't see the appeal of working with something so cold and mindless, so inattentive and incapable of affinity towards its creator.

I respect flora, because it will never fully submit. I know the plants around me don't possess sentience, but I cannot help but feel that they understand just how much the human race needs them. Everything, from the air we breathe, to the majority of food in middle class England's typical refrigerator, to the experimental medicine (derived from the bulb of the daffodil) being used to treat my mother's Alzheimer's disease, depends on plants. Some might argue that machines do not need the flora around us, but who built those machines? Furthermore, most progressive technology was inspired by the complexity of the plant world. Velcro would not have come about had it not been for the seedpod of the abrasive cocklebur; biodegradable plastic would be nothing without the dextrose of corn.

There are archeologists, too, who focus on lives long choked out by harsh circumstance. I believe archeology is important, but I feel that sometimes we focus so much on what the past held, or in what the distant future might contain, and we fail to remember the constants, the present, the here and the now.

Some in the science community would love to be more like a machine, but why be so fragile? Every time a machine breaks, a human is responsible for piecing it back together. But time and time again have I watched a plant struggle through, rejecting the nurturing of my hand and reseeding itself, determined not to die, determined to continue its legacy.

It is a choice in the science world between temporary, blinding beauty, and cold, emotionless eternity, and I may be biased, but my soliloquy can vouch that I am accepting of the inevitable death of plants, as long as the spontaneity and mystery of their vibrancy may be enjoyed in their lifetime.

I may be more passionate than other botanists, but my determination to achieve respect for the plant world is something I have always possessed, for as long as I can remember.

It's a hard thing to explain, how I can feel the wishes and the nature of the still life around me. My first memory is watching my neighbor attempt to extinguish the life of a dandelion on his yard when I was five. The anger I had felt was overwhelming, and that fury seemed to flow forth into the single dandelion I was so affixed upon. I could feel the pulse of life in the weed, feel a sense of fear, and I had wished for it to grow, grow so tall the man could never get rid of it. And, to be put simply, the dandelion grew. It stretched with little pops as it rose toward the man, sprouting new flower heads in rapid succession. The dandelion had adopted my fury, but my stomach turned in realization that the anger was directed at the innocent man attempting to clean up his yard, now trembling at the sight of the monster plant. Even at five I knew I couldn't hurt an innocent human, so I had torn my eyes away, retracting my emotions from the dandelion, tearing up as I felt it wither without my support.

I didn't quite understand at that young age that I was different. I remember distinctly the day my mother discovered what I could do, also. I was seven, and my mother was mumbling about how the tomato plant on her windowsill was dying, despite her attempts to keep it healthy.

"Why don't you just let it know you want it to grow?" I had asked her, innocently, genuinely.

She had laughed at what she thought was ignorance and informed me that it doesn't work that way, that we can't communicate with plants.