Acorns on Acid

At my new home in North Carolina, there stands one lone oak tree in the back yard. This oak tree produces hundreds of acorns, which are strewn about on the nearby ground. My roommate spends a great deal of time gathering these acorns, in an effort to prevent a seasonal infiltration of squirrels. Our kitchen table now is home to mounds of acorns, numbering in the hundreds. I don't know what I am more stupefied by: the sheer number of acorns a single oak tree can house, or the sheer determination of my roommate to rid the yard of all traces of these acorns.

Perhaps it is the Virgo in me, but I often find myself fascinated with random details. Like acorns. They are, after all, details of an oak tree. The efforts of my roommate have afforded me with an opportunity to really get up close and personal with acorns. They greet me every morning from the kitchen table, and bid me sweet dreams as I grab my nightly drink of water and go to bed. Those acorns have become quite the presence in the house.

I can't help but scratch my head and wonder what is going to become of those acorns. She doesn't seem inclined to throw them away, but they're certainly not going back outside again. Maybe I can make a little choir of acorns. They can sing madrigals. Wow, I'm really on to something here . . . . . I'm on to something big . . . . . a chorus of embryonic oak voices, rising above the coffee machine, above the pots and pans, above the granite countertops . . . .

A lot of people think I did tons of acid. This is not so. In fact, I have never done acid, or psychedelics of any sort. I really didn't need to.