i was walking home yesterday evening when out the corner of my eye i saw the prettiest yellow flower of my life. the most delicate little buttercup i’d ever seen growing right through the sidewalk. i was immediately taken by the compulsion to pluck the flower and care for it to the best of my ability. i hesitated only for a moment as i tried to decide whether or not it’d be better served in its current environment, but a fear of the hurried steps of passers-by assuaged my concerns. as soon as i clutched the pale yellow flower in my hands i was infatuated. never before had i seen a blossom so powerful yet subdued, so emphatic without ever making a statement, so beautiful but so plain. i couldn’t get enough and quickly i knew that the rest of my walk home would be an inattentive blunder through the city as my careful hands caressed the four distinct petals and my vision stayed firmly focused on my newly discovered treasure. for a few moments, i didn’t move, i stood there, breathing heavily. it wasn’t until i started wondering whether or not i’d be able to keep this feeling that i felt the desire to walk return. as i started moving down the sidewalk however, my plans changed.
for reasons totally unbeknownst to me, as soon as i started walking - every single person i encountered on the short journey home tried their hardest to convince me to get rid of the flower. from all angles all i could hear was that the flower and myself were much too different, that we were much too alike, that i was living out a fantasy in my head where i’m able to nurse the flower back to health despite having cut it at its root only moments ago. i was begged for the flowers return, they tried to trick me out of the flower, phone call after phone call demanding the flower’s release, but i didn’t relent. in fact, despite the outpouring of emotions related to my buttercup and the constant receiving of unsolicited advice, i continued being totally enamored with the flower as i walked, ignoring the questions I could and mumbling around those who blocked my path when necessary.
i carried on this way for several blocks. in the mess of the questioning and the frustrations and complaints from those around me i found myself confused, lost, and nowhere near my home. the longer i stared at the buttercup the more i seemed to know about it. for instance, as i walked across a busy intersection lost in thought and causing problems for every man woman and child in a vehicle within 40 feet of me, i was bombarded with a single word; “ranunculus”. prior to picking up the blossom i wouldn’t have had any idea what ranunculus, the flower’s large genus - more information i wouldn’t have known fifteen minutes ago - meant, but now, as i haplessly wandered through the city’s winding streets and thought about how beautiful the buttercup in my hands was, i found myself thinking about the origins of the name. thinking about the origin of words wasn’t something i ever found value in. etymology always seemed like a fairly inconclusive science especially considering how visceral and shifting language tends to be. what i myself know to be true about the english language today may not be relevant when the rubble and debris are finally lifted and all of our dialectic ticks and mass malapropisms are lost forever, floating with our shared delusions of understanding further from anywhere we may find them again. despite these overarching frustrations, the word ranunculus spoke to me and i found myself staring at the soft yellow petals thinking of small frogs and cold rivers¹.
still standing in place, lost in thought and in space, thinking of an environment i’d never experienced, i felt the flower communicate with me. it wasn’t through words and the feeling was so quiet that had i been walking i likely would’ve missed it. at first it seemed so sweet, everything it shared with me i felt resonate with fervor but as i continued standing, staring at the buttercup as it shared with me what it knew to be true, i realized it wasn’t sweet at all, it was echoing the same sentiments as the people we’d passed just moments ago. realizing this i unclenched my fist and watched the pretty yellow buttercup fall slowly to the ground. all at once i felt like i’d been shaken from a dream. first, my building was directly in front of me, i wasn’t lost at all. second, all the voices and all the people who’d been telling me to drop it were nowhere to be found. feeling embarrassed and like the butt of a joke id originally started telling, i walked inside and went to sleep. through the night i was plagued by dreams that told me that this way was always right.
rana - frog/unculus - extended form of -culus, thought to be derived from diminutive singular forms ending in -o and oblique stems ending in -in or -on. possibly from sermunculus (small talk, rumor) wherein the -o from sermo (converse, talk) changes to -u.