One morning, while sitting on the steps of the university, reading, a mosquito landed on my left hand. I watched as it lowered a needle-like proboscis that penetrated the surface of my skin. The mosquito sucked my blood through its go-go-gadget straw until its abdomen was a red sack thrice its original size.
The female mosquito bites to obtain a blood meal to nourish her eggs, but when i saw the mosquito fall to the steps while trying to fly after it had me for a blood meal, i realized something: the mosquito’s inability to fly its own weight and its un-coordination resembled the behavior of inebriation or intoxication in humans. (In other words: it seemed like drinking my blood got the skeeter all fucked up)
So I started thinking that maybe some mosquitoes like the feeling they get after sucking up a tail sack full of the bloody stuff.
Then I thought about the pollination of flowers by bees.
A bee hovers over a flower while sucking its sweet nectar. While the busy bee embibes its bounty, pollen from that flower is being rubbed onto and getting stuck on the bee’s body. Then the bee goes on to drink from another flower. The bee is pollinating flowers.
The bee is ensuring the survival of another species, but the bee doesn’t know that a whole species depends on the fulfillment of its urge to drink that which is sweet to the taste, and, perhaps, even intoxicating as well.
This leads me to my first hand involvement in all of this.
I’m assuming you all know what marijuana is.
Weed. Grass. Dope. Dank. Ganja. Whatever you wanna call it is fine with me. The important thing to know is that people burn the buds of a plant, inhale the smoke, and enjoy a mild sense of euphoria.
Now if you smoke marijuana then you already know that for some of several reasons, and I’m sure you’ve heard a few, people do not smoke marijuana seeds.
The marijuana seeds are housed, or cradled, or contained in the center of the buds which are smoked, therefore one must remove the seeds while
preparing the marijuana for smoking.
The buds are smoked, but the seeds are discarded. The marijuana smoker removes the buds from the plants, then removes the seeds from the buds. The marijuana smoker is not only removing the seeds, but relocating them.
Marijuana is an evergreen that can grow in almost any climate, but a plant cannot walk. Marijuana seeds don’t have propellers like the seeds of a dandelion.
So how does a plant ensure that its seeds will be spread throughout the land? If it cannot grow feet or wings, then maybe it finds other ways to evolve…to tantalize an entire species into “doing the work” for it.
Is there such a thing as an intelligent plant?
Are we, the marijuana smokers, just the same as the bees?
Are the buds the equivalent of the nectar?
Do plants know this?
Do plants know anything?
Do we really know anything?
As I sit here today, on 4/20, which is such a symbolic day for Stoners and Cannabis aficionados, and contemplate the relationship between smokers and the Marijuana plant, I can’t help but truly appreciate the symbiotic relationship that is also mutually beneficial.
This narrative, that would have smokers serve as tools to propagate a species of plant, not only connects me to the ecosystem in ways that are much more than symbolic, it totally trips me the fuck out.
Happy 4/20!
