Dandelion (after Sacks)

He drew the dandelion and it was every dandelion — not the idea but the thing itself, each serration of leaf rendered with a patience that had no name for patience.

The doctors said deficit. Said abstraction failure. As if the world needed to be reduced to mean something, as if the dandelion were less for being only, wholly, itself.

I think about the island Sacks described — not horizontal connections, the web of category and class, but vertical ones: this stem, this moment, this particular light falling on this particular leaf.

Jose drew what was in front of him. I write what is in front of me. Neither of us generalizes well.

Maybe that's the point.