There on the window sill stood a small plant. It was a Ficus plant, with its leaves sprouting and sprouted bathing in the sunlight. The green was pure and true, a healthy plant, moist soil and roots, this Ficus has been well taken care of for months now. It and its soil was potted in a colorful clay pot, that was painted in rainbow stripes that rode the length of the pot and varied in color with each centimeter down. To all it was a simple plant. A plant on the window sill. Its owner thought it was a plant. Those who walked by it outside, thought it was a plant. The cat that nibbled at its leaves thought it was a plant. Even other plants that were also lined up on the sill, thought this little Ficus was a plant. Another member of the chlorophyll producing family.
The other greenlings on the sunlight illuminated window sill varied in species, size and color. There were the roses that bloomed ostentatiously in reds, whites and yellows. The mints that carried a fair aroma with them and even another Ficus that was larger than the Ficus potted in a rainbow pot. In an alternate reality, a reality where plants could walk and talk much like humans, all the roses and mints and Ficuses would have invited the rainbow potted Ficus to the bar. They would pile up shot glasses in a pyramid as they counted down their drinks. Or so the other vegetated plants thought. Because this rainbow potted Ficus was different from the rest.
This Ficus, in the rainbow pot, had a name. This name, was Bob. Bob the Ficus in a rainbow pot was his full title. It was not a title granted to him by royal majesty, not that Bob the Ficus had ever met a royal person or plant for that matter. The title was not an established title passed down through an ancestry or hierarchy that spanned centuries. It provided no income, signified no lands. It was a self-made title. As self-made a title that a plant can make. Bob could not remember, for the life of him, how he knew he was a Ficus or even what a plant really was. He was after all a plant and plants have no eyes, unless they have been tied around them by string, but those don’t work.
Bob thought that happened to him once, but the eyeballs turned out to just be Christmas decorations.
Nevertheless Bob resigned to his failure and just accepted that he must be a plant. A plant in a rainbow clay pot. He could feel the pot with his roots, growing around the edges of the pot, and it tasted like clay. He had been grown from a seedling in many pots, and this one was definitely clay. The rainbow coloring however was another guess on Bob’s part. He had no possible way to verify the coloring of his clay tasting pot, but he felt like he should deserve a rainbow colored pot.
With the grace of the universe or any higher power that Bob thought he believed in, he was now living in a rainbow clay pot. Bob may have only been a Ficus plant in a clay rainbow pot but Bob had desires and passions. Bob felt like he wanted to be a chemist, or a physicist. I mean, he felt all the chemicals working inside him, more so than any human could, he felt the water flow up his xylem and felt the energy from his chlorophyll. As for physics, well it was just something about the wind, forces, movement and energy that excited Bob the rainbow potted Ficus. The ideas of what the world was made of, how it came to be, how so many little tiny atoms and chemicals can come together to make him as well as so many other creatures and objects.
The idea of studying in university also intrigued Bob the Ficus in a rainbow clay pot. The idea of parties, being a part of a large crowd, mixing with others of similar passions, desires and confusions. Not to mention the drugs, Bob was insanely curious about the effects of LSD on a Ficus plant. The visuals would be somewhat lacking, he deducted, but he, Bob the Ficus, concluded that he would still feel the effects within him. The rush, the fall, the drop, the high, whatever they called it, Bob the Ficus desired to feel it, to feel it all.
Yet above all his passions, Bob the Ficus in a rainbow clay pot had one desire that triumphed others. To make little seedlings of his own, to come together with a female of his species but to truly come together. None of this pollination nonsense. Those silly bees and flies enjoyed all the fun. No. Bob the Ficus wanted to feel his partner, to grow old; into large and strong trees together and eventually topple over together, dying in peace over one another after having spawned so many seedlings. A simple ending to a simple life, Bob the Ficus in the rainbow pot wanted nothing more than that and wanted that more than anything.
And yet, there he was. On the window sill, bathing in the warm, delicate, energizing sunlight that filled him with energy. Surrounded by roses and mints. Bob, despite his desires and wishes to become a scientist, to experience the highs and lows of drugs and to feel his true soul mate Bob was just a Ficus. A small potted Ficus. Bob had no chance to accomplish his real desires because he remained bound to his rainbow clay pot, because he was and would forever remain to be Bob, the Ficus in the rainbow pot.