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 the trees were here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are possibly the remains of a Druid grove or college. The hilltop 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--many of them buttercups. I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester when 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. People don't use people's real names when they write about them for publication. I've heard it called protecting the innocent.
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 the trees were here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are possibly the remains of a Druid grove or college. The hilltop 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--many of them buttercups. I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester when 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. People don't use people's real names when they write about them for publication. I've heard it called protecting the innocent.
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 Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official MTSU sketchbooks. Accurate drawings were part of our final grade.
One beautiful spring Tuesday Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official MTSU sketchbooks. 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. Mumps is like that. Sticky-minded I call it. Anything he reads or hears simply gets stuck in his mind. My mind? Slippery about sums it up.
If you were an innocent bystander, you would have marveled because it was the work of an instant for Mumps and me to sprawl on the grass and begin 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's 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 me to sprawl on the grass and begin 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's 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. It was in this heightened state of enlightenment when the striatum realized we were late for lab. It was either leave right away or risk wearing the dunce cap for late arrival. We got a move on.
Now, 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 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. You see, when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems, well, not just drivel but absolute rot. So it was with us.
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. However, this particular story seems to have no end. Perhaps that's the way it should be. A once and future tale.
Now, 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 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. You see, when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems, well, not just drivel but absolute rot. So it was with us.
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. However, this particular story seems to have no end. Perhaps that's the way it should be. A once and future tale.
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.
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.