At some time in my childhood I acquired a fear of plants. I don’t know why. I’ve always associated seeing a couple of horror films with its onset –a scene in Children of the Corn where the corn reaches out and grabs the protagonists as they’re running away; some other film where reels of film jump out of their cans and mummify the editor– but I have no memory of abuse at the tendrils of a house plant (or something equally dramatic). So it’s puzzling that I still have this mild phobia of our green cousins.

Today I took a break from Max patching for my show Friday with a walk over to Abingdon Square to enjoy the flowers. I’ve become quite the always-stop-to-smell-the-flowers kind of guy in the past few years so I’m loving the spring, stopping often to stick my nose in the many brightly colored ephemera in my neighborhood. I mused on how much work it would take to image a tulip in a 3D modelling program. How much energy is spent in a tulip’s life cycle, how much potential is stored in one bulb? I walked on to see the other flowers, passing a guy ranting into a cellphone about “the spitefulness of the cellphone user, the fake smirk of a cellphone user…” I figured he was a media studies type…not so. As I was appreciating the cloud-of-tiny-purple-flowers-like-a-pom-pom-on-long-green-stalks, I saw that he was staring at a guy across the square talking on his phone. Another douchebag nutcase… I mused inwardly. He gave me the stink-eye, too.

But back to the botanophobia. Aversive to plants? What gives? As I stared at the pom-poms, noting how much taller and wider they were than yesterday, I concluded that my fear of plants was allegorical, a goofy symptom of the defensive reflex I (over-)developed when I was having a rough time and getting teased a lot in elementary school. When I went out on a limb, e.g., expressing my thoughts and emotions freely, I reined myself in. Once I realized I’d overdone it a tad, I could notice it consciously and extinguish it. Ah, therapy. Good stuff.