Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Dancing Plant

Back in 1987, Elin Schweickart who later became Chadwick and I were sitting in a little room off the kitchen by the back stairs of an old wood San Francisco apartment building near the SFZC's City Center. We'd been looking at the stars from the landing on top of the back stairs and had gone back inside. We sat down in that small space to talk before joining our friends in the living room. A long tendral of a green leafy vine that had grown in through a a crack between boards in the outer wall caught our eye. The vine was moving in undulating sweeps from side to side. "Why is it moving," she asked. "Maybe a little breeze in here," I said. We looked for a source of a breeze. We'd shut the door to the back stairs and to the kitchen. The window ws shut. We felt the wall for a breeze. We could find none. Feel none. It continued to sway. We sat and watched it. It was pleasant. I found a thin piece of material in the trash can and held it up in the air. It hung motionless. We gave up, assuming some force in the plant from outside or something about the nature of plants or vines that we didn't understand was in play. Later I asked a botonist, an orchid grower, a gardener. No one had any explanation other than to suggest we were high.

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