Moth
The poet Baudelaire thought that genius was the ability to revisit childhood at will. Grammy award-winning artist and ethnobotanist Justin Robinson said recently that he always tried to do “What my 10-year-old self would be proud of.”
What is the genius we have as children? At age 10, we have the strength and agility to do almost anything we desire, the language to express ourselves, and, most of all, an unlimited curiosity. Our imagination is not fettered by shame or sarcasm.
I watched a little bit of genius unfold while I was sitting in a coffee shop recently. A broken fire hydrant, shattered by a truck weeks ago, teetered outside the cafe door. Dozens of people walked past the strange looking hydrant without noticing. About 8:30 a.m., two schoolboys came along. They pressed their faces to the hydrant’s iron rim to peer deep into the earth then jumped for joy.
When I got home, I noticed a thumbnail-sized moth resting on my garden wall. The whitish moth was trying to look like a patch of lichen so predators wouldn’t notice her. And it was hard to see that she was a moth.
I could easily imagine what the boys would say.
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Moth......The poet Baudelaire thought that genius was the...