Tuesday, September 26, 2000

 

11:02 p.m. Well, here we are: an artistic rendition of one of the very real gardenias that I have in my tiny concrete garden. You can practically smell the waxy petals ... and I might have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: You can actually sniff all the smell from a flower.

I know because I've done it. I once conducted a very scientific study of a rose, and a very fragrant rose it was. I removed a soft, soft, baby-cheek soft petal and I draped it over the end of my nose. After a while, after a lot of sniffs, the scent was gone. I repeated the experiment. Same thing happened.

I surmise that the petal has pockets of scent that are similar to the pockets of juice that are on the surface of an orange peel. If you bend an orange peel back and forth a few times, those pockets stop spurting and they seem to be depleted. I conclude that a rose petal holds its secrets in the very same way.

Therefore, I could (if I wanted to) lift this gardenia right up off the scanner and sniff the bejesus out of it until it's nothing more than a limp simulacrum of itself. Or, I could be mature and let it continue to waft. We'll see about that.

Yesterday, I read an article about George W., our presidential candidate, and it seems that Mr. Bush may very well be a classic dyslexic, rather than merely a short-attention-spanned word mangler. I find this mighty disturbing.

In the first place, his governor's office is the place of last resort before they pull the switch and snuff out your life, correctionally speaking. He's the last human being between the convicted and the afterlife, and he's supposed to be reading and considering the appeals that come across his desk.

According to the article, he's not much of a reader. He expects his staff to give him the "bottom line" when they toss a tome his way.

In the second place, what if he's elected and he's sitting at the big desk with the red phone and the red button. The pause button and the panic button. Better ded than red. Press? Pause? What's the difference? It could happen.

That nasty net of words that we weave. Bureaucrats turn into rats and medicine goes to the dogs. A wall of misunderstanding and confusion if you don't understand, if it's coming at you too quickly, if there's hissing instead of listening ...

... and sometimes you've got to stop and smell the gardenia before the scent is parsed away.