A spring fever came over me. I slipped away and found myself surrounded by trees in an airship drifting under the command of its captain—Earth’s Climate. Horizon lines blurred behind a vibrant mist tinted ruby red. My neck extended. My head grew bigger and bigger. My eyes widened into bulging beads. Then, my airship wobbled and tipped. I fell out and landed in the canopy of a tree. Upon every branch, bouquets of mini red flowers unfurled. 

It all happened after I decided to deactivate my brain and social habits from Facebook for a little while.

There were fucking flowers everywhere. Everywhere. Some of the flowers had male reproductive parts and some of the flowers flaunted female reproductive parts. The sexually active botanical doohickies came in one size: teensy. 

I have a microscope. So I righted the airship, loaded it with some of the flowers, and brought them to my laboratory. There was no time to waste announcing these good vibrations of newfound joys on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or Snapchat.

Thank goodness, because springtime comes and goes before you know it—like all good orgasms. There was fucking flower power and fucking fast breeding going on in the trees and within the growing things hiding out in my favorite romantic forests and valleys and gardens. It was all happening without the use of nuclear power, batteries, engines, or viagra.

The red flowers casting a ruby mist over all of New England bloomed upon branches of the Swamp Maple—Acer rubrum—and an intense curiosity about the Acer rubrum launched my airship at the same time I deflated my social media networks.              .

The facts were simply these: After years of partaking in a slow and awkward cruise on social media, my brain had regressed and atrophied. Even though I had tried to believe the hype that social media was the wave of the future and a necessary learned behavior for creating connections and essential networks—the truth is, (for some of us), social media can be as vast a colossal failure as pesticides and nuclear weapons and heroin.

I went to my laboratories and decided to start repairing my brain by encouraging it to re-build new networks and connections.

My laboratories are inside of this restored and renovated old barn (on the second floor) and outside of it too (gardens created and tended by me):

I surrounded myself with twigs, branches, buds, flowers, nuts, leaves, galls, bugs—all of it collected during regular walking treks or bike riding jaunts or dreamy meditative strolls through my gardens and through wildlife conservation land near home.

Studying the little flowers of a common maple tree tossed me into adventure-lands booby trapped with rabbit holes into which I fell. Disorientation and fascination ensued. During one morning’s tumbles, I underlined the following passages inside eight random books on my quest to find out how the Swamp Maple was invented, how it works to make more Swamp Maples, and how its LEAVES are capable of manufacturing oxygen for all living beings. (Without ever using batteries, engines, or viagra.)

Here are some written passages I underlined:

“This process is based on the “doctrine of uniformitarianism,” which states simply, “The present is the key to the past.” 

“However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, not with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.”

“Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white….It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories.”

“I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly.”

“…shambles….elegant experiments….The oxygen in the atmosphere is the exhalation of the chloroplasts living in plants….most of the associations between the living things we know about are essentially cooperative ones….symbiotic to one degree or another….Every creature is, in some sense, connected to and dependent on the rest.”

“Seeds are extraordinary objects.”

“Here, away from the pleasant, unintentional, fatal seductions and unplanned blackmail of friends and acquaintances, away from the facade I had built over the years to impress a world with the self I wished I were—a false front that I was obliged continually to reinforce—perhaps I could find my real self, whether it be good or bad.”

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Will the real Earth last long enough? For embarking on our own magical mystery tours? Tours that lead us to discover the stunning essential existence of leaves, the crazy sex life of flowers, the undeniable links, connections, and networks our lives depend on through the generosities of Mother Earth?

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Here are some sketchbook drawings of my brain establishing new connections:

I found grass growing under one Swamp Maple with red tints running through the graceful blades. What caused the colorations?

My gardens. Catmint. Iris. Pinks. Phlox.

I stand with the Paris Climate Agreement and France’s vow with all who do, to—

“Make The Planet Great Again.”

We need to save the birds and the bees.

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