Saturday, March 15, 2008

I wish the web were scratch 'n' sniff.

Friends, my gardenia has bloomed once more. And that's not some sort of naughty euphemism. I mean, really, it's blooming. Look:



I bought this little lady almost three years ago. That romantic spring, she filled the whole flat with her heady fragrance of possibility, but never since. I don't know if it was the liquid nitrogen I started feeding her or the impassioned diatribes about the fundamentals of effective narrative arc, but this spring, something gave her the soul food she needed to emerge from the winter of her discontent.

If you had been an anthropologist observing my behavior over the last few days, you would've seen something like this:

Write for ten minutes.
Check gardenia bud.
Adjust blinds for optimum sunlight.
Sprinkle soil with plant food.
Back to desk.
Read perezhilton.com for ten minutes.
Glance at bud from desk.
Pretend to brainstorm for headlines while staring at plant from across room.
Adjust blinds again.
Sniff slowly unfurling petals.
Turn pot to get maximum leaf exposure.
Mist foliage with spritzer bottle.
Check perezhilton again.
Repeat.

There's just something about watching living things grow. It's intensely gratifying. And a flowering plant is like magic with roots.

I'm not sure what this has to do with not buying stuff, except that it's a very effective distraction, and I am supporting the production of oxygen. Just think how happy I'd be if I had a mini fruit orchard like those people from the Times article I just read.

In the meantime, I'm lecturing these two guys on cadence and sentence structure:



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