~springing~

~dogwood, Cornus florida~

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Spring is definitely springing around here - hints of green have turned into a millon tiny, perfectly-shaped leaves, and the birds have been flying around as if they're getting ready for a big party (and I suppose, in a way, that they are).

So I started the day by saying to someone in the lab 'Boy, things would be great if they weren't so bad'.  Have you ever been in that kind of situation?  When things are really exciting...and simultaneously sucky?

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So many of the daffodils are still blooming away, splashes of color in the garden arranged as if part of a Pollock painting -- color, just color.

Someone emailed me tonight, referring to the changes in my University as 'the Reconstruction'.  This made me laugh as only one can when they live in a southern city where the 'real' Reconstruction is still a part of weekly conversation.  Ahhh...Charleston.

Oh, and the gnats seem to have kicked the bucket overnight.  They lowered the temperature in the lab, so they couldn't fly - and who knows what else was done.  They couldn't spray to get rid of them (because of co-contamination issues with on-going chemical analyses) - so who knows.

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We did have the lab's weekly meeting today - a gather of microbiologists and chemists discussing data for a manuscript that we are submitting jointly.  Sometimes these worlds collide in a teenaged 'you don't understand me' jumble of confusion that we slowly untangle until we come to common ground:  The answer.  What is the answer?  Can we get to it?  A new idea is brought forward and everyone runs to the comfort of common ground.  Once again, baby steps, moving forward.

So Katherine began the lab meeting, as always, with a poem - one by a well-known 13th century Persian Poet - in honor of the name of today's presentor, who has a lovely name reminescent of that time.   

by Rumi, no title given 

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
    drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

    God has put into the form of hashish a power
    to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

    God has made sleep so
    that it erases every thought.

    God made Majnun love Layla so much that
    just her dog would cause confusion in him.

     There are thousands of wines
    that can take over our minds.

    Don't think all ecstacies
    are the same!

    Jesus was lost in his love for God.
    His donkey was drunk with barley.

    Drink from the presence of saints,
    not from those other jars.

    Every object, every being,
    is a jar full of delight.

    Be a conoisseur,
    and taste with caution.

    Any wine will get you high.
    Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

    the ones unadulterated with fear,
    or some urgency about "what's needed."

    Drink the wine that moves you
    as a camel moves when it's been untied,

    and is just ambling about.

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Comments

[blossom]

Lovely poem. I love those white daffodils, too. I usually see them in yellows.