chicory correction

Correction.

It is chicory I see whose blue dazzles me.

Chicory, common by roadsides; uncommonly colorful; distinct.

The Botanical Collegial Mystery

Sometimes, while lying alone in a hammock looking at the North Star on a cool summer night at 3 a.m., I ask the botanical and cosmological universe:

Whatever happened to Botanist Colleague?

Oh, I know, I know, she is now Botanist Noncolleague, as it were, as it is, but it's as if my departure ruptured the taxonomy of form and structure, as if the communal chickory connection were dechickoried, pilloried for verbally consorting with me and my ilk, a silk with no S, as opposed to Botanist Colleague, now Botanist Formercolleague, who is bracketed by S's, one might muse.

Just wondering.

ChicorLit

Maybe I'm getting better, have turned a corner, reached a tipping point, cliched a cliche. Last week I was chatting with a colleague (Botanist Colleague) about chicory, celebrating its singularly summery and scintillating color. I asked her about it, since I wasn't quite sure how chicory differs from purple coneflower or cornflower, if at all.

Sure enough, the flower I had in mind is chicory, she confirmed for me by consulting some serious-looking textbooks. You see chicory on roadsides a lot at this time of year, just about anywhere in the continental U.S. (As for Europe, I don't know, so chime in readers from around the planet.) It has been used as a substitute for coffee.

So today I made a remark to Botanist Colleague (BC) about chicory, something to the effect that she certainly got it right. Our chicory-referenced dialogue proceeded along these lines, although we bloggeristic Proustians realize how unfaithful and saucy a mistress Ms. Memory can be:

PK: "You see them all over."

BC: "Yeah, you do."

PK: "You were saying they're transitory, lasting for a day?" [like blog posts, I could've added but did not]

BC: "They bloom every day. They wilt real quick."

PK: "Just like me," I quickly and breezily reply in my head, the words clanging around in the cranium like a struck gong.

But I didn't say it! A monumental first!

The elevator doors close.

Saved.

This may be the first instance of what I think they call impulse control in my so-called adult impulsive life.