Rave Solo

That third tree down the left-hand side of the alley below my fourth floor window looks like Robert the Bruce. I call it Robert the Spruce. It is not a spruce. It is a sycamore. I see the face of Robert the Bruce glaring beneath his bascinet helmet, steeling himself to charge Edward II’s English hordes, to rush his men headlong through the fields of Bannockburn to face death, to cheat death; to victory. Flowers of Scotland. 

I know it is a sycamore because I walked to it one dawn, pulled one of its leaves, and ran it through my flora app. 

“American Sycamore,” it flashed. 

I cannot well call it Robert the Sycamore. I pull out my artistic license, and, boom!, fiat lux, Robert the Spruce! There. That feels better. 

I’m happy to name trees. I’ll call the one up the alley from King Spruce, the one closer to me, Bill; the next one up, Jerry; the next one closer, Phil; and the one closest that just peeks above the window sill, Seamus. He looks like a Seamus.

“Hiya, Seamus!”

or

“How are you, Seamus?” to translate into American-speak. 

Perhaps we are familiar enough that I can say, “What about yaz, Seamus!” 

“Ock! Just grand, ya yank bastard!” he sings in a rough as his trunk baritone, “When yaz finally gonna get to the Pale and splash into that there 40 Foot like the big drunk dose Buck Mulligan bastard y’air?” 

“Dinnae, Seamus, got some work tahdue be’fairz I kinz git o’er thar.”

“Ock! Pare shame,” he grunts. 

He’s heard all my excuses. 

“I must get back to work, Seamus; stay good, Seamus!”

“And yee ez wool!”

Seamus claims he’s from Carrickfergus, but I don’t believe him. He’s just a many generations removed descendant of such lot, like me. How he got such a Taig name, I dinnae. Maybe he is. Well. I’ll luv’im all the same, as I do my best with everybody, no matter how annoying. 

Maybe I’m paranoid, or perhaps just looking for an excuse for my decades of aberrant behavior, but could that artistic license be an autistic one, a passport from another sensory world? If I’m on the spectrum, and have been since the beginning way back in the 1960s, it sure would explain a lot, this life of feeling out of step and confused by people who know exactly how it all works while I just stand to the side, clench my fists over and over as my head spins on a stick, and all voices and other sounds whip themselves into a molten puree. 

But I’ll stick with the ADHD diagnosis for now – it’s been doctor declared – and get the hell back to work like a good Protestant.

Let’s get with the Anglo-Saxon-Protest program! 

Still. I rave.

I rave solo.