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October 06, 2006
Notations.
Casting about for something to read on the streetcar, and my eye fell upon a battered copy of The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.
I enjoyed reading it, so much so that I broke one of my cardinal rules: I lent it to a friend.
Tom was a great person, and I mean him no disrespect when I write that I never expected to see the book again. Rachel found it when we were sorting through some things.
I should have known he'd want to hold on to it. Subtitled "A Plant's-Eye View of the World," Pollan's book covers the development of four plants through their relationships to humans: the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. Anybody who knew Tom will tell you how much he truly loved apples.
I'm not at all resentful. He marked it up with notes and snippets of purple Post-it paper, bold marks in the margins to emphasize paragraphs.
Ideas that didn't conform to his views were crossed out with Xs, but he'd artfully annotate where he did agree: "god-mother gives food not govt." There's also notations about flight schedules and an Apple logo sticker.
Weird, him being here and not-here at the same time.
Posted by Your Protagonist at October 6, 2006 09:09 AM