Things Like Love
Rickenella fibula Orange moss agaric Where is it okay to talk about love? About the deeply felt pull of the heart toward something fragile, something unpopular or overlooked, something so ephemeral that it's guaranteed to be gone the next time you look? Something extremely difficult to explain? I'm taking an online course in botanical illustration because I guess that's the next thing. In our first week, we were asked to write about the intersection of art and science, and how it pertains to our work; for me, that intersection is love, pure and simple. But how do I talk about a thing like love in a one-page essay for an online certificate class? There's a curiosity and reverence for sheer awesome specificity of all living things that compels me to love the biological sciences, particularly botany. Every single plant- every leaf, stem, twig, bud, or seed- is utterly unique. There are no two alike, and I've never stopped being absolutely gobsmacked by this
