Saturday, March 11, 2017

Schlumbergera seedling no. 058 (again again)

I think this is my first "C" seedling; 058A Much Confusion and 058B Buff Orpington were both from the 2015-16 season, and although I'm not positive that they were different seedlings, the blooms were different enough that I thought they could be: Much Confusion was more of a reddish-orange / pink, and Buff Orpington was orange / white, and although I didn't wind up seeing a ton of blooms from either of them, the colors were consistent enough that I felt there was justification for separate names.

And then this year, I get this bloom:


Which is more red than orange, different enough that it also seems like it could be a separate seedling. The problem is that this is also the year when many of the seedlings started producing blooms that were significantly different from what they'd done previously, so it seems possible to me that the three seedlings I supposedly have in this one pot are only two. Maybe only one.

So whatever name I use here, I may have to abandon it later; this has happened before, when I decided that 008A Frightened Dog and 008B Candor were probably the same seedling. In this case, obviously, all names would collapse down to (the now prophetic-seeming) 058A Much Confusion.1 But I don't know yet. It's possible that this seedling is distinct, while 058A and 058B are the same seedling, which means I should give it a name anyway. Just maybe not too good of a name, lest I have to drop it.

The candidates I came up with before having this realization were:

Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas and one of the few people associated with Baylor University2 I'm not ashamed of;
Consternation, defined by various online dictionaries as "a state of paralyzing dismay," "a strong feeling of surprise or disappointment that causes confusion," "a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay," and "a state of great alarm agitation, or dismay." Which doesn't feel terribly apropos at the moment I'm writing this, but it did a couple weeks prior when I was looking for name candidates, and it may a couple weeks later when this post is published. Very difficult to predict my emotional state in advance, these days.
Maharaurava, a level of both the Hindu and Buddhist hells, reserved for people who indulge at the expense of other beings, in which their flesh is eaten, painfully, by serpent-like beasts called rurus,3 for a very long but finite period of time.4
And Tizzyhark is a random word combination from my list, stuck together to make a new word. I don't know what a tizzyhark is, but I guess I thought the word sounded like it meant something interesting.

Knowing that I may eventually lose the name I choose makes the selection process weird. I think I like Ann Richards too well for that, and would rather give her an "A" seedling. And Tizzyhark is both appealing and discardable, should it come to that, but I sort of feel like I should have some idea, even a vague idea, what a tizzyhark is, before I use it.

Which leaves Maharaurava and Consternation. I feel like Consternation is both more disposable and more appropriate to the situation of not knowing how many names I need for this particular pot, plus the historical moment, so I'm going to name this one Consternation.

Maharaurava will be back, though. I have that feeling.

-

1 Not that there's a rule that the A name wins; it didn't win in the case of the 008 pot. It's just that Much Confusion would obviously be the right name for the 058 pot.
2 (Baylor is my alma mater, which gets a little more shameful every year; if you like, you can do a search for "baylor university scandal" and see what comes up. If you don't, here's CBS news talking about something from a couple scandals ago, i.e., last October. Trigger warning for rape.)
3 (more correctly, a subtype of ruru called a kravyada; I don't know what makes them different from your run of the mill ruru)
4 It's unclear to me whether the punishment is the same in both Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of Maharaurava, or whether the criteria to be assigned to Maharaurava are necessarily the same in both religions. My description is taken from Wikipedia, which describes the Hindu version, if there's a difference, though another site ("Hindupedia") describes Maharaurava as being for "sinners who had usurped the properties of others or their rightful owners." Which also works.
I do appreciate the effort involved in coming up with twenty-eight different hells; it somehow seems more fair than in the Christian version, where everybody goes to the same place and gets the same punishment regardless of what you did to deserve it. (Yes, there's Dante's Inferno, but the Inferno is fanfiction, not canon.) Are you an ever-suspicious man who is endlessly wary that others are coming to take your wealth? Do you sin to get and keep your money? You get to go to Sucimukha, the hell where Yamadutas, which I take to be approximately equal to Christianity's demons (I apologize for not taking the time to learn Hindu and Buddhist theology prior to writing this post) stitch thread through your whole body. Do you lie in oaths or business? You're going to Avici, a hell where you are thrown headfirst off a mountain repeatedly without dying. Are you a king or government official who takes the money of merchants, commits mass murder, or ruins your nation? You go to Sarameydana, where you are eaten by 720 dogs with razor-sharp teeth.
Not sure what happens in cases where someone qualifies for multiple hells at once.
So that's fun. Christianity should totally steal the multiple-hells thing. Not necessarily those specific hells, but the general idea.


2 comments:

Diana said...

I really enjoy these blog posts where I learn something new. Now I'm off to a Google Hole to learn about Hindu/Buddhist hells.

That's not something I ever thought I'd say...

Pattock said...

A tizzyhark would, obviously be the mishearing of someone's words because you were in a bit of a flap at the time.

You said to buy you a hazelnut coffee? Sorry, the computer was glitching, I was really wound up and I tizzyharked that as coffin. Now, where did I put the receipt?

(I appear to have changed my google identity from Pat the Plant to Pattock, a type of hoe used for saffron plants.)