Be Yourself! Unless You Can Be A Unicorn… Or an Orchid

“Be Yourself!  Unless You Can Be a Unicorn…”

Nora found this quote, browsing Amazon for a mousepad.  We had a good laugh.  We didn’t buy the mousepad… I think she picked out something with a cute kitten on it instead.

But obviously, the catchy euphemism made me think– in metaphor, naturally– about becoming.  Growth, the health of the developing psyche, self concept.  All this, and more.  I pondered in particular a petulant predisposition… mayhap a personal (possibly pastoral?) passion pertaining to pitiable pretenses to perfection: Project Unicorn.

(As an avid advocate for alliteration, I admit this agnomen is appalling… but it’s apt, anyway).

“…And Out Floated Eeyore.”

The only noticeable result, so far, of my attempts to become a unicorn (speaking metaphorically, remember), is that along the rough and unlikely road to perfect unicorn-ness, I’m developing pesky little Eyore characteristics.  Since reaching for immediate magical perfection when you’re human and fallible can be sometimes discouraging.   And while there are endearing aspects to Eyore’s quirks, I don’t think we’ll ever see a mousepad that reads, “Be Yourself.  Unless You Can Be Eeyore.”

… That’s probably not true.  You can find just about anything on Amazon.

The trick with being yourself… well, actually, there’s at least as many tricks with being yourself as there are with being a unicorn.  Knowing yourself in the first place is one of the big ones, I think.  Who knows themselves, really?

“Thanks For Noticin’ Me”

Sometimes I wake up in the night, and seeing Frank asleep next to me,  I want to shake him awake too, so I can ask:  Hey, do you know me very well?  Would you mind telling me everything you know?  Because I’m feeling lost on the subject right now.  I’m afraid I’m not quite enough, whatever I am.

Truth be told, I occasionally do ply Frank with these questions.  Like when we’re on road trips– this keeps our conversations fresh, and vibrant.  A couple of decades ago, I asked him: If I were an animal, what would I be?  Hoping of course for something elegant, something grand, something… unicorn-esque.  (This was before unicorns were so trendy. At least my longings and yearnings are consistently avant-garde.)

His reluctant reply:  A quail. 

What?  A quail?  How mundane!  How monotone!  How provincial!  Why a quail, of all things?  If he was going for diminutive and cute (which I assumed he was), why not a kitten, or a dove, or at least a quaint “Feed The Birds” variety of pigeon? 

Well, he said.  You would be a quail because quail appear, when they approach a road overspread with rushing traffic, to be both indecisive, and easily flummoxed (flummoxed isn’t a word Frank would ordinarily use; I’m translating).  Darting first this way towards a ditch, then weaving that way towards an oncoming truck, then fluttering off barely in time to be nicked rather than treaded upon by a tire.   

I’ve never forgotten this.  Which (my not forgetting) could mean that Frank was wrong; that in fact, I’m neither quail, nor pigeon, nor unicorn either.  I’m an elephant.

“It’s Not Much of A Tail, But I’m Sort of Attached to It”

Further Aside: The other day Frank, barely home from work, found a practical use for a newly acquired tool– a six inch composite digital caliper.  He loves (Loves!) proof of man’s engineering genius; apparently, this caliper is along the lines of a Nikola Tesla wonder.  So now at least I know this one very important thing about myself: the exact width of my nose, at my nostrils.  Thirty two millimeters, in case that data is ever important.  I have to say (frankly) that I’m relieved that his perfect nose is slightly wider than mine, at thirty five millimeters.  Although since his head is twice as big as mine, this data may not be particularly flattering to me, in terms of proportion. 

Also, I’m grateful Frank didn’t think to measure nose lengths.  I have no doubt mine would win, head sizes aside.  

“Bouncy or Coffy, It’s All the Same at the Bottom of the River”

Let’s leave Eeyore afloat in the stream, the unicorn adrift in the skies, Frank at work with his caliper… and talk about orchids.  It’s relevant.

In “The Orchid Thief, A True Story of Beauty and Obsession”,  Susan Orlean ruminates on  an intriguing phenomenon: people’s passion for and collection of orchids.  For  several fascinating chapters, Orleans lays out man’s history with the orchid, which reads a bit like “The Jewel of The Nile” meets “Heart of Darkness” and “Dallas”.   There’s mystery, danger, dark jungles, sinister plots, money, fame, murder, espionage, a floating glass palace, a plane crash, suffragette vengeance.

The romantic in me is positively entranced.

After thoroughly convincing us of the fantastical life of orchids (on the grand scale of romance, quail being a 4, and unicorns being maybe a 9, orchids would be… oh, 100 or so), Orlean goes on to illustrate their tenacious hold on evolution– their clever propensity to adapt and change, survive, multiply.  There’s thousands of species and hundreds of thousands of varieties of orchids; new ones are bred in labs or are Happening In Nature Every Day.  Which means that there is no possible way to collect them all, much less classify each of them.  They change and spread (and some disappear) too fast.  Orlean says, “The botanical complexity of orchids and their mutability makes them perhaps the most compelling and maddening of all collectible living things… to desire orchids is to have a desire that will never be, can never be, fully requited”.

As a sucker for the unattainable, I get the attraction.

As a wistful middle-aged Eyore/quail/elephant/wanna-be Unicorn navigating the riptide of dreams unrealized, I am all admiration.  If who I am is nebulous anyway, I would just as soon be an orchid, please!

“I’d Say Thistles, But Nobody Listens to Me, Anyway.”

Orchids!  Look at what they can do, where they’ve been, what they’ve become, where they are going!  Colors, form, size… all these traits are endless.  Plus they’re for real, unlike the imaginary unicorn, which even Nora doesn’t believe in anymore (although she will fight to the pain anyone who insists that dragons are fictional).  Many orchids live in the air, roots wrapped around bark on trunks and in the branches of trees– in the most dangerous, exotic, obscure, forgotten places.  Or not… sometimes after hurricanes, wind-swept orchid seeds from far-off climes settle and grow on the dilapidated shed roofs or in the forgotten crevices of rocks in the backwoods of Florida.

They are on every continent.  Some smell like chocolate, or pineapple, or grape Kool Aid.  Some stink.  Some are shaped like king’s slippers, some like lady’s…  some look like butterflies, bees, lady’s bonnets, clamshells, piglet faces… or poodles with the wind blowing their ears back.  Some look like white, feathery, flying monkeys.

“… Just Right, For Not Much of a Donkey”

Maybe my favorite thing about orchids is that they are not defined in their “now”… they are on a continuous journey of further development.  Their possibilities are limitless.  As a race, they have outlived the dinosaurs; individually, they outlive the humans who grow them.  And as a family, they never stop changing.  In their rich, ancient history, in their past and present ability to survive and adapt, their promise of good things to come is everlasting.

They’re picky and clever about when and how they reproduce, sometimes taking a decade to set seed, looking like they are getting nowhere fast while they wait for their moment.  And such a moment!  When all the right factors come together, they seize the opportunity.  Or they make their own opportunities (the pollinating strategies of some orchids! positively mind-blowing).   And then, they are prolific and expansive.  Millions of seeds from one seed pod on one parent plant… carried on breezes, trade winds, hurricanes, feathers… all over the planet.  As Orlean says, the seed from one pod alone could supply enough orchids for an eternity of prom corsages.

Who knows exactly what sorts of orchids those seeds will grow into, but no matter!  Out of small things, great things come to pass.  There is growth, there is abundance; there is variety; there is world travel.

There are lovely surprises.

“Sure is a Cheerful Color.  Guess I’ll Have to Get Used to It.”

I have three ordinary household orchids: two fuschia with deeper magenta spots, one a clear, soft white with hints of yellow and chartreuse.  None of mine are fragrant (so much for a well-calibrated nose).  I’m pretty sure two of them lived at Home Depot for awhile (both were gifts, for which I am grateful every day).  The other I found at a local nursery with rows and rows of arborvitae, juniper, and marigolds crowding around it.

My orchids are not ordinary to me (what, I ask, is ordinary, anyway?).  Their blooms are extravagant and elegant and long lived– one of my fuschia orchids has been blooming since before Halloween…and now in January, I still see new buds swelling further down its stem, as the original blooms continue to hover, weightless, over my sink.  They have funky roots, slender gray-green fingers that lift themselves out of their bark-filled containers, reaching for new continents, breezier promontories.

And my orchids are tough.  They thrive on sporadic watering, kitchen fumes (I cook with lots of garlic), a counter-prowling cat, my children’s varying music, and erstwhile neglect.  I’d like to own half a dozen more of the white ones… maybe of the pink ones, too.  And a few green, and a couple soft, rich, butter yellow…

“Don’t Bustle Me.  Don’t Now-Then Me.”

All of which isn’t to say that being an orchid (metaphor, remember) wouldn’t be trying, even harrowing.  Orchids probably have long let go of the comforting fallacy that they’re in control.  Or that other orchids they admire or are fond of are in control.   Nor do they just sit and let life rush past without putting their stamp on it,  which sort of passiveness is tempting in the way that chocolate and BBC series are tempting.  Surprises are embraced, as prickly as they sometimes are.   Opportunities snatched, even some with moth-dust, or stingers.

Orchids don’t allow fear of heights to squelch their loftiest goals.    Nor do they wait, with Eeyore, for someone cleverer or stronger to pull them out of the river.

Ok, I don’t know that— how orchids ultimately get out of rivers.  Certainly there’s no shame in rescue.  For the sake of this essay, let’s assume orchids just generally avoid falling in.  And if they do fall in, they wind up eventually populating the river’s delta with new and exciting varieties, once they arrive.  Eeyore, take note.  

As an orchid, I would have to accept that I cannot Know Everything Including the Future.  Even after I wrestle the necessary angels and slip-waisted hornets.  Or evade the inevitable Tigger.  I would have to live without fear in a reality where I can never tell for certain  how my circumstances tomorrow– and my best responses to them– will change my world and me in it, though they always will, one way or another.  Even if all I can do is hold my breath as the sky falls (or, I guess, as I bob in the river).

(Increased lung capacity, though… that’s a good thing.)

“Gaiety.  Song-And-Dance.  Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush…”

But!  As an orchid, rather than never measuring up, never being enough, limited always by the conventions and yardsticks of my environment  (or my riddled past), I would simply be… evolving.  On my way, progressing– complex, mutable, adaptable, capable of thriving.  Growth (and flowering!) would always be my thing, perhaps in ways and in the midst of circumstances that surprise even me.  Nebulousness would inevitably work in my favor, rather than against me.

I’d be… (quick heart beat) Evanescent.

I might even– could conceivably– become adept at flinging the best of my creations into the eye of the storm, and see them take root on distant shores.  Only because I’d be unafraid to fling the worst, too.

“Yes.  One of Those Would be Just the Thing.”

When I think of myself this way,  with all of the Orchid’s potentiality, life suddenly feels… mmmm.   Full of hope and promise, wonder and revelation.  Beautiful in exuberant, swinging-on-vines-through-the-jungle sorts of ways.  I see myself strong and lithe in Amazon-bleached khaki, my pockets full of pretty rocks, rare tomato seeds, ancient writ.  In this paradigm, Risk and even Failure mean growth; The Unknown means Possibilities.  Stalemates and Dead Ends are simply occasions to Muster Strength, Gather Resources, Strategize, Morph.

Perched on steep, wind-blown ledges, fluttering white and ghost-like in a steamy Florida swamp…

“Days.  Weeks.  Months.  Who Knows?”

So now I’m thinking this… I may not know quite enough or be strong or capable enough to be entirely myself.  Just yet.  Whatever that is seems to be in constant flux anyway.  But I do know just enough to be a really committed orchid.

Goodnight kittens.  Goodnight mittens.  Goodnight socks, clocks, quail, doves, pigeons, elephant.  And unicorn.  Fare thee well and happy at last, sweet Eeyore.

Hello, Orchid Woman.

(Art featured in this article, except for the selfies and orchid photo: mixed media collage with encaustic by Lynaea.   Frank took the selfies.)