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 seemingly inevitable but open-ended individuality.

Why? Why is there all this uniqueness? I feel that if I could figure out why this is so, I’d understand something fundamental to the workings of the universe. Every twist in a branch, every different turn of a leaf petiole, tells a story. It's a part of history, of time. In fact, it's possible that this embodied uniqueness is time itself, in some esoteric way. It's a path, and it's a physical manifestation, and it's sublime.

drawing exercise
of a common acorn squash
(Curcubita pepo var. turbinata)

Even knowing the underlying mechanics (I can still recite the steps of the Krebbs cycle, thank you Professor Brown) doesn't change the wonder. The philosophy of the natural world, in the broadest sense of "loving the knowledge" of it, isn't diminished for me by scientific inquiry. But neither does it diminish my desire to portray it, to make art of it, to try to capture that uniqueness, that path through time. Art is another way of understanding. Of loving.

And this intersection of art and science is an incredibly fertile place for me. It's where science, storytelling, fine art, philosophy, and even a sort of wordless spirituality come together. I'm grateful to be here.

_______________________________

I've started another blog. Of course I have. It's more technical, related to my botanical illustration. Check it out here.