The Orchid Teacher

No, no, no, not someone to teach the arts of nurturing orchids. No, no. The orchid is the teacher. She gives the lessons. He tells the tale. It sends the message. The orchid. It's the seer, guru, professor, maestro.

The orchid's the teacher.

The blossoms wilted. They died. They fell. The big green leaves stayed around all winter after the flower spikes were cut down near the bottom. Watered once a week in the time of hibernation, a time before The Quarantines. Faithfully. Months passed. And in the spring two, possibly three or four, minuscule shoots, bright dots, green-yellow eyes peering from the sphagnum. It is said these are flower spikes. Nascent. 

Hope. After the endless winter.

Hope was not abandoned, all ye who entered here.

Hope in the Age of Coronavirus.

I am the orchid.

You are the orchid.

No human heart or voice ever scolded the orchid, never inserted a sideways "should" in any shape, color, or form. Never remonstrated the orchid for its tardiness, its barrenness, its playing dead. No human name murmured "what if" or "if only you had" or "but." The orchid wouldn't listen anyway. She knew her secrets, he guarded his destiny, it surrendered to its fate. The orchid endured not a single "told you so" or "could have" or "would have."

Her patience with our impatience was our homework, quiz, and test. Everyone passed. His lesson was for all to see all along. Speaking not a word, the orchid spoke volumes.

You are the orchid.

I am the orchid.

We sing hymns to the orchid teacher. The orchid is the teacher, we the pupils.

The orchid is the message and the messenger.
 

The Unkenneling

My favorite word in all of Shakespeare is "unkennel."

"If his occulted guilt / Do not itself unkennel in one speech, / It is a damned ghost that we have seen . . . "  

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 

A Le Moyne College professor noted that word more than fifty years ago. I remembered. 

Unkennel. You can picture it. Angry, growling dogs. Barking, drooling, panting with ravenous rage.

We used to use the term "go viral." That video went viral on YouTube. The tweet went viral in minutes. Their Facebook post went viral.

Viral? 

Coronavirus killed that. Or should.

The unkenneled coronavirus.

the end of fragrance?

Is it the end of fragrance? Does social distancing stretch the molecular cone of influence that perfumes and allied fragrances emanate? Will future fragrantial formulas need more potency to pierce, ever so gently and invisibly, the social distance bubble? And will new, stronger fragrantical formulations disturb the infinitely delicate harmony that fragrance chords thrive on?

Weighty questions, on International Fragrance Day no less.

And indeed what are the ends of fragrance? Why do we adorn ourselves in such evocative olfactory raiment? To what ends, what purposes?

The coronavirus moment gives us a perfumed pause to ponder answers to these unanswerable questions.

The bride throws the bouquet. The bouquet is caught. The bouquet is portentous, a sign suggesting love and marriage, says the tradition. And what of our personal bouquets, tossed by any one of us at any point on the gender spectrum? What are we to make of our fragrance bouquet?

What do I expect from wearing my signature chords, my inimitable and idiosyncratic bouquet of arranged self scent, sprayed-on or rolled-on eau de parfum or cologne or eau de toilette (typically Tom Ford, if you must know)? Do I expect a compliment, a stranger's jolt of je ne sais quoi, a passport to Dallianceville or amorous abandon? Whatever I have expected or will expect is nuanced by the strictures of social distancing, at least for now.

Picture this: a terminally ill patient in hospice. Her matted hair. His swarthy face, beard growth of five days. Her chipped, unpainted nails. He petitions the volunteer to comb his hair, to shave him. She asks for a perm, gets her nails done. Why? They ain't going nowhere, as Bob Dylan put it. 

It's for dignity. Aesthetics. Pride of ownership. Something incalculable, more solemn or sacred, having no word in our vernacular.

And the same with fragrance.

She puts it on. Wears her favorite, most alluring fragrance. She is quarantined, lives alone, will not leave the house today.

He does the same. He is running low on his favorite fragrance. He applies it anyway, judiciously and jubilantly. Self-isolation permits this. Demands it.

In fragrante delicto.

an abundance of caution

 Signs in the Age of Coronavirus.

An "abundance of caution" is invoked. On decrees, doorways, doors of banks, laundromats, churches, temples, mosques, malls, ballparks, restaurants, schools, universities, coffee shops, barbershops, city halls, meeting halls, union halls, walls, apartment buildings, movie theaters, toll booths, brothels, insurance companies, brokerages, pharmacies, gambling joints, opium dens, cruise ships.

"Out of an abundance of caution . . . "

"If you have enough, you have abundance," goes the maxim for maximum effect.

And what is enough?

Abundance, such a fulsome and lavish word, billowing its bountiful message. Says the OED, an overflowing, to flow in waves.

Lap it up.

Caution. The OED: bond, surety, a taking heed.

Signs of our times.

And speaking of signs, try my tiny book: http://amzn.to/1Mz8RkY

flattening the curve

One might argue that flattening the curve started with Twiggy (Lesley Hornby) with the Mod look in the Sixties. But one might further, and more strenuously, posit that curve flattening was conceived, pushed, and marketed by men in power desirous of a certain look (can that look be termed androgynous any more?). If the sinewy, slender, skinny (all subjective adjectives) appearance being modeled did not promote anorexia, did it nevertheless subconsciously mumble (or blare in the public square) a message about shape and body, a message about shame and acceptance, desire and hunger?

And what about the hollowed-out waif look?

Has such flattening of the curve ever ceased? Pick up a fashion magazine and tell us.

Then there's curvy. As a pendulum-swinging alternative, curvy embraces the contours, the sensuous curves celebrated by, say, Caravaggio. Fatten the curve, one might say to a Twiggy-era model. (Though, to drill down lexicographically, "fatten" is a semantic choice that would put one in hot water, ripe for boiling, or into a penitential sauna sure to drip off sweat and ounces.)

Take a look at Marilyn Monroe. No one dared suggest she flatten the curve.

Times change.

Times even change to the point where such an analysis as this, such a curvilinear discourse, is not limited to one sex or gender or identity. The curves are up for grabs, flat or otherwise. As are the angular lines, the straight edges.

Not "up for grabs." Wrong phrase. Delete that. Up for discussion, yes. But anything else must be consensual.

social distancing vs. social proximating

I have been known to have social distanced. It is not the same as socially distanced. I have known social distancing. I have known social distancing, in its comings and its goings. Have you? Haven't you? The social distancing of snubs and snafus and near-misses. Or near Missus. The social distancing of forays and fumbles, dalliances and disasters. I have known them all. As T.S. Eliot penned it:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase

I have known social distancing by any other name. Filed under the names of loneliness, alienation, indifference, rebuff, and buffering. Under the banners of taboo, time, and space. The labels of contagion or conjugation. Felt as intimacy or aridity.

I have socially distanced by one word, one sentence, a single faux pas. 

Haven't you? Have you?

Social distancing.

How about you?

How about us?

I have sung hymns to social distancing.

No one heard them.

Or no one replied.

Social distancing in the key of me, the key of you, the chords of coldness.

We sought the bridge.

They paid the toll.

They crossed the border.

I bridged the gap.

You narrowed the way . . . of distancing's definition, its social cues, its molecular matrix.

And while we're at it, at this safe distance, socially speaking, tell me, what is its opposite?

Social proximating?

As in: "I want to hold your hand . . . if you wash it." Or: "I want to touch your elbow (with my elbow) ..."

Social proximating, as in "Baby, socially proximate with me, babe."

It's a new brave new landscape, a brand-new vernacular.

Hold on.

But keep your distance.

For your good and mine.

For our good. And for the good of others.

Ball 1

So lonely, like a lonely planet. So abandoned. Kicked (or thrown, dribbled, tossed, rolled) to the side of the road, actually the sidewalk. Air ball. Ground ball. Basketball. So many questions, so little time. Actually, as much time as we need. The parade of questions, replete with mystery, enslaved to no shot clock:

• Who left it here?
• Why?
• One person or several?
• Male or female or questioning or both or none?
• How long has it been here?
• Why was it still there two days later?
• Who won?
• Or was it a solitary game?
• Where's the hoop or hoops?
• Wouild a baseball or football lie (lay, lie, who knows, who cares) there similarly and for the same duration?
• Would someone toss a basketball back and forth against a wall as one might a tennis ball?
• Was violence involved?
• Apathy?
• Attrition?
• Anomie?
• Anime?
• Espionage?
• Subterfuge?
• How long will it stay there?
• Has anyone else noticed it?
• Why has no one picked it up and kept it?
• Is this symbolic?
• Iconic?
• Nihilistic?
• Does this prove the world is round?
• What would happen, where would it go, if an earthquake trembled the earth, wobbling the ground beneath our feet, the way coronavirus is shaking our foundations, our infrastructure, nudging downhill on the one and only Tipperary Hill?

the cloud

the cloud of unknowing
clouds of knowing
in the cloud
in the clouds, head
partly cloudy
cumulus
nimbus
stratus
cumulonimbus
cloud storage
foggy bottom
forecast clouds and sun
cloud control
null and void
bank of clouds
cloudy thinking
clouds sky sun
data datum datus dati
cactus cacti
cloudy outlook
cloud cover
for cryin' out cloud
cloud aloud auld lang syne
cloud crowd
crowd
crowds