glass door pulls in the garden or in other words, nothing important

we have an atrium fence outside one of the bathrooms and a few years ago we added wood finials to the corner posts and topped those off with glass door pulls. nice and sparkly, right?

in the intervening years, they’ve come off (the weather, dry or wet, is the culprit) and the crows have made off with them.

except for this one. it’s been sitting on the railing just about at my eye level for a couple of years now, every-once-in-a-while i’ll give it a nudge when i’m watering the ferns (staghorn, leather, and a nameless one) that reside inside the atrium. it entertains me with its light and shape and color (-fulness, -lessness, either or), at least when i think about it which i did on saturday when i photographed it and today as i share it with you.

sunday (a flower a day)

the garden has been neglected this year.  it’s managed fairly well what with the occasional weeding or trimming or pruning, but for the most part i’ve just let it be.  other than the initial rose bloom in the early spring, there haven’t been as many blossoms, but still enough to make a bouquet now and then.  strangely enough, some of the cymbidium orchids are blooming now, instead of in january–other flowers are also blooming early–the camellia and the paper whites are way ahead of schedule and i can’t decide if that’s a result of me ignoring them or if some greater power is at work–a neighbor’s azalea hedge is in full bloom–not what you would expect in october.  go figure.

to make up for my indifference, i’ve planned a week of blossoms, one-a-day, just like a vitamin.  some days i’ll add some words, but there may be days when i don’t so don’t be surprised if i let the image do the talking (can you imagine?)

also, for some strange reason (could it be the moon, halloween?), i feel like sharing some things you may not know about me and that i haven’t already divulged somewhere, sometime:

1.  i worked at k-mart my junior year of high school.  it is where i learned the little ditty, “i’ve got the son in the morning and the father at night.”

2.  i have green eyes except for when they’re blue.

3.  my second toe is longer than my big toe.  supposedly that’s a sign of royalty.  (as if.)

4.  i’m shy.   (are your eyes rolling back into your head?)  and i’m fearless in a crowd.  like my mother i will talk to anyone and yet i can be embarrassingly shy.  it depends, on what i don’t know, it just happens sometimes.

the rose and the grasshopper (notes on procrastination)

is it not amazing (well, at least to me, but possibly not as amazing as i’m letting on, perhaps i should start over); it always fascinates me how easily distracted i can be in the name of ________.  the garden needed watering and although we have a sprinkler system for most of it, there are an awful lot of pots and window boxes that just need to be hand-watered.

but this grasshopper got in the way.  you don’t often see grasshoppers this close to the coast, but when you do, they are always brilliant chartreuse and huge (they are huge compared to the grasshoppers i remember from my youth in south dakota, where, in the summer, you couldn’t spit without hitting one–we, the neighbor kids and i, used to catch them and put them in pickle jars–pickle jars being more abundant back then as opposed to other kinds of jars–it’s possible that our mothers held onto  empty pickle jars to use to store grease from cooking bacon or, if i remember correctly, from their use of crisco for so many different dishes, what those dishes were i cannot tell you, although i do remember, now that we’re talking about cooking — were we? — that my mother loved spinach cooked in vinegar and try as she might she could never get me to like it.  do you wonder why?  it’s not that i didn’t like spinach, creamed was okay if it was necessary, but cooked with vinegar?  are you kidding?)

other things got in my way today and kept me from completing the list of tasks i had assigned to this particular sunday.  unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your particular take on the things that can derail even the most committed of workaholics — although i do not consider myself a ‘workaholic’–i’ve always subscribed to getting what you can get done in your 40 hours, except when it’s necessary to work longer, then you do.  it appears then that these distractions today kept me from nothing important as much as i might have thought they were) — and now i can’t remember what was deemed ‘unfortunately’.  <sigh>

today then.  it was what it was meant to be, i just had no idea that it would be as perfect as it was and sometimes, when your plans are derailed by beauty regardless of where you may encounter it, you just have to give into it–whatever it is.  in this case, today’s for instance, it would be the perfection of the day and how it unfolded from this morning’s dog walk to the farmer’s market (btw, i cut my hair — both of them — today), to a luscious little laydown just after lunch, a cool breeze flowing up the canyon from the ocean on which my dreams floated– i dreamt of you and you–and a little after that, watering the garden, the surprise visit from the grasshopper and these random thoughts on not getting done what i had so thoughtfully, so carefully, and as it turned out, so unconvincingly, planned.  c’est la guerre, n’est-ce pas? (gratuitous use of french your bonus–not that you were expecting one, a bonus that is, but nonetheless, i have the skill and i should use it as i see fit, hmm?)

visitations (lives of the saints)

“o, the sisters of mercy they are not departed or gone.  they were waiting for me when i thought that i could not go on.  and they brought me their comfort, and later they brought me this song.  o, i hope you run into them, you who have been traveling so long.” –leonard cohen

part 1

they always drove into town in the pickup with the camper shell from their home in south dakota or missouri, making the journey seem like a vacation, taking their time, stopping (as we always did when i was young) at roadside attractions, deciding on the spur of the moment to take this two-lane road or that one instead of the interstate, just to say they had done it, “it looked interesting,” she would tell me later, going into the details of this farm or that small town they had ‘discovered’ on their way to somewhere else, her fourth husband a willing participant in her explorations and whims.

they would visit friends, a collection of people she gathered wherever she went, a true talent and one i cannot say i fully understood at the time, the making of friends wherever, whenever.  i try now to remember if that ability was because she was a good listener or if it was her simple, pleasant manner, maybe it was an undefinable trait, or maybe it was just her nature that led people to her.  however she managed it, she had friends scattered around the midwest;  columbine and lilac, peony and rose.  when did she find time to maintain such a flower garden?

when i was growing up i didn’t pay attention to the subtleties of my mother’s maturity, her adult abilities and worldly navigational devices and tools, but perhaps i have been most influenced by them or by the lack of them and have only come to realize what they were when i reached a certain cognizant age (somewhere between 2_ and death, or perhaps in the never world of my subconscious) and when i find myself employing a skill set i had no idea i possessed.  i wish i could spell out for you what those subtleties are (other than the obvious petty lying one engages to keep the social wheels greased), their details, their lattice work on which your friendships flourish.

the first time they came to chicago to visit me, was it 1975 or ’76?, i can’t recall, and there is no mention of it in my journal from the time; i do know it was summer and chicago was a-shimmer with heat and humidity, but somehow perfect while they were there (or maybe it was its awful hot, sticky self, the weather is unimportant to this story, i was just hoping i could set a mood for you in order that you might appreciate more of what i’m about to share with you.)

have i mentioned that my mother would cast her spell over my friends so that they would also become her friends?  o yes, months later after they had been introduced, this one or that one would casually say something to this effect (and to my horror), “i was speaking with evelyn the other day and we were talking about you.  o, don’t worry, it wasn’t anything negative, but you know how she is…”  and i, on the other end of this particular telephone conversation, blushing, my pulse racing.   i would try to figure out how and when they found the quiet moment of their, most likely, one and only meeting, to secretly exchange phone numbers, neither of them so much as breaking a sweat in their collusion.   this habit of acquiring my closest friends as hers was one she began when i left for college and kept until she died, not unlike her pack of marlboros on the telephone table next to her chair in the living room, taking one out and carefully lighting it with a decorative flame and then that exhalation; i can hear it now, they must have too.

part 2

so.  plans are made, destination and arrival time plotted and soon (too quickly) here they are, standing in the lobby of 2___ n. pine grove, pushing the buzzer for r. patrick, apt. 1114, suitcases in hand, a bit of american gothic done up in polyester (“it travels better”) and smelling of the road, my mother a bit wind-tossed and my step-father solicitous as always of her every need, although her independence might have put off a less secure man, he seemed not to pay any attention to it and i think that may have been part of his appeal to her, this final love of her life (after me.)

this is the summer that i was sporting a collection of straw borsalinos accompanied by fringed silk scarves tossed gaily, yes you read that right, tossed gaily (in case you thought your eyes were deceiving you the first time) over one or the other of my bony shoulders.   you might ask the author at this point how open he was about his sexuality with his mother and step-father and he would say, “it’s none of your business.”  that is how it was handled in our family.  (if you’ve been following any of these family history jaunts i’ve been indulging myself in this past days/weeks/months/years, you may have discovered that at one point in my life i had two mommies, that too was never discussed.)

they settled comfortably in my studio apartment, sleeping in the bedroom alcove with me on the little off-white curved boudoir sofa i’d rescued from a second-hand store in uptown (lawrence & clark-ish) where it was wilting from disuse, hiding in a corner.  i’d swathed it in watered georgette, patterned in blue and green hues from a sari shop in the same neighborhood, covering the blemishes it had been wearing for years before i came to own it.   at least i’d start out on it, but it was so small and kidney-shaped that i ended up sleeping on the floor instead (he shrugged).

we took the 151 bus down to the near north and walked over to arnie’s for lunch one day and ate spinach salad and steak tartare (“why would you eat spinach raw,” asked my stepfather, my mother delighting in the alfalfa sprouts crowning hers, possibly making a little mooing noise under her breath to my horror–and secret delight.)

that evening we dined with my dearest friend (bff before there was such a thing), jimmy, in his apartment in the same building.    he had a 100 candles lit, reflecting the shimmering lights of the city below, the warmth of the light magnified by one mirrored wall, his palm trees and exotic plants making it a tropical night in the middle of chicago.  jimmy was an adept.  adept as in magical-thinking, fantasy-producing, another world/universe-living, brilliant human consumed by the darkest undercurrent (the river styx) and for a few years my off- and on-again gay mentor and guide to the world.  under his tutelage my culture quotient shot way up, i shed some of the country ‘gosh’ ness and instead acquired a big city ‘fuck’ ness.  what i chose to take with me has stood me well these many years.

my mother was fascinated by him and he by her and they soon had their heads together on his living room couch while step-father and i fiddled and twirled our wine glasses and idly watched them.  she would parry and he would feint; he would joust and she would side-step as elegantly as a show horse, so subtle was their mutual admiration and interest in each other that, to the untrained eye, you would have thought they had known each other for years.  at some point in the evening they exchanged phone numbers (see paragraph 5 above.)

wisely, jimmy continued to pour wine into their glasses, so that when it came time to lead them back to my apartment after dinner there was no objection to his and my heading out to the bars for a little late night revelry.

part 3

i’ve always been partial to the hindu concept of life:  a spiraling thread of history through which your life dissects, your past may be someone else’s future, their now your long ago.    but it is that spiraling (do you always think of the word ‘spiraling’ as a downward movement?  i think most of us do, but i often like to contemplate it laying on its side or moving up instead of down.   it is the same with its shape, a funnel your first thought with its wide top and narrow bottom, but i see it as particularly regular in shape, as wide at the top as it is at the bottom–or equal from side to side), that will now come into play.  we have moved from that idyllic summer of ’7_ and it is now close to the end of a decade and i have called out to them.

j.w. had a country girl’s charm with a big city woman’s body, all legs, ass and breasts cooing sweet nothings to men twice her age ’til they’d be wiping the drool off their chins with a paper cocktail napkin already wet with their sloppy beer.   she and i worked together at arnie’s, she in the bar, me on the floor, and we had an immediate connection.  as with most of us there, the restaurant job was ‘temporary’ until our real job came along.  she a potter, me a _________ (the blank is intentional, i had no idea what i wanted to be.  all i knew is that i did not want to be working in a restaurant another day.)  she lived in the pilsen east artist community at 18th street and halsted and after my first visit to her loft i was ready to move down there and lead la vie bohème, she mimi, me rodolphe (beats his chest).

instead of this [imagined] love affair (whether it was with her or not) it fast became a downward spiral of drugs, drink and wantonness (not because of her, or maybe it was) and when i finally pulled myself up out of the <insert your favorite word here to describe the depths of despair i was feeling at the time> i made up my mind to make something happen (even if it did not come true, as it didn’t, and as is often the case with the irresolute–you know who you are–there were more hard days ahead), i set out to change my life.

there was a party.   a going-away party where everything in the house was for sale. we (i had a roommate, more on that at another time, it is too hard to write about the living right now.  i’ve started to address this time in some written form or the other over the last several months and have failed each time –failed as far as i am the judge of what works and what doesn’t when speaking of the living–we shall see if i am able to move past that in the future as it is an important part, a key actually, to this story, both before this tale and afterward, and yet it does not matter now as i relate to you these visitations), sold everything including the refrigerator that belonged to the landlord (we replaced it) during this night of manic revelry; hundreds of people came through and by morning, the place was stripped bare (bare-ish, i ended up staying on by myself for several months afterward, not everyone took with them what they bought and never mentioned that they hadn’t gotten what they paid for.  it still makes me giggle with elfin delight that the party was so good that paying for something was like the fee for enjoying yourself, whether you took home your purchase or not.  there was never an ounce of recrimination from any attendee.  another “oh, well,” he sighed.)

part 4

and finally.  it’s not the final ‘final’ just so you know.  i don’t want to get your hopes up that this will be the end of it, you’re just going to have to soldier on here for a bit more as i dredge this pond bottom for all of the memory that’s been laying there gathering algae and scum (and the occasional dead frog).   focus, rp, focus.  i called them and said, “i’ve got a job lined up in phoenix and i’m going to move in few weeks, don’t want to take a lot with me, will you come and get the important stuff?” and she, “why, honey, of course, we will.”  and being the deus ex machina that they were, days later the pick-up with the camper shell (why were they always silver-y blue?) is parked in front of 7__ w. 18th st.

it is summer again in chicago and this time i’m not living on the lake.  instead i’m down in a neighborhood that has seen many better days, the streets are dusty, two doors down from me live a pair of hookers (as sweet as pie, btw) and the neighborhood abuts little mexico city, so named, well, you figure it out.   the artist inhabitants are a motley crew, a little wild-eyed, gypsy fortune-telling, handsome and beautiful, exotic birds really and i loved each of them, but that’s definitely an aside.  it’s not that my mother didn’t know where i was living, i shared as much as i thought necessary and i’d been down to see them several times over the intervening years–the important thing is that they had seen me, they had to know that it was not good, but they looked past it, not wanting to bring up something that they had no control over.  is that the mark of a good parent of an adult child or the telling point of one who was not?  i only ask the question now as i am writing this as it did not cross my mind that they were there with anything but love in their caring hearts.

“does this make me look like an artist or a kook?” she asked me as she sported the lamp shade on her head, standing on the sidewalk just down from my space (it’s the tan one in the light with the two big windows) and so the photo above, the one that i had been searching so desperately for so many weeks and it turned up on the shelf in the closet in the 2nd bedroom in an album, “yeah, didn’t you know that’s where it was?” said m. with the nonchalance of an olympic slalom skier or a secret agent.

the night before the photo, i’d taken them on the halsted bus up to greek town for a night out.  we ate at roditys where i was a regular and the staff poured on the charm and the wine and by the time we left a couple of hours later, she and my step-dad were as lit as i was.  we  stopped at the belly dancing place a few doors down for a night cap and somewhere between there and here (the tinkling of the silver jewelry adorning the dancer and the buzz of the crowd) i realized that my mother could pretty much handle anything that life threw at her.    no matter where she was she fit in.  instead of kilroy was here, it was evelyn was here, and don’t forget it; but do remember to call me, okay?  you’ve got the number.

palm trees (& flu shots)

fourteen years ago we planted a $8.99 10 gallon queen palm in the corner of our front yard.  it was maybe 5′ tall at the time.  sheltered from the canyon winds that whistle on the other side of our house, it’s been a real delight watching it grow.  about 5 years ago, it got to be so tall that i had to get up on the roof to trim it.  today, it’s close to 30′ tall & we have to have professionals come & take off the dead fronds.

when you walk down our driveway from the street you can now see it waving at you, “welcome home, welcome home,” it seems to whisper; the fronds duck & rustle & throw their head back, a stallion tossing its mane, “ride me, get on, let’s go for a spin.”

standing underneath it now & looking up at its joyousness, its revelry & its maturity (when it blooms, great drops of yellow fuzz burst out of a hard cone of palm bark,  a philip treacy hat) it lifts you up off your feet with its sheer beauty, its living essence pulls you off the ground, your shoes drop off your feet & wrapped in its grecian robes, you dance & cavort amongst the ruins, no music (just its own) to interfere with your thoughts (isadora in your dreams.)

post script:  i blame the flu shot i got today.  my head is throbbing & is just painful enough to induce this mirage.

a morning in may (inventory)

water, water everywhere

the santa anas (dry off shore winds) have been blowing the last two days (think florida without the humidity) & they suck the moisture out of everything instantaneously: skin, eyeballs, plant life, soil.  it’s itchy weather & (good for moisturizer manufacturers)

whatever is about to bloom busts out in this weather & hangs close to the ground (drooping listlessly, but dramatically — lilies are drag queens after all & understand the dramatic possibilities of any situation.)

the tiny air orchids (i’m sure they have a scientific name, but you’re not going to get that from me) seem shocked by the heat & turn their precious little faces (all orchids so sexual) to the heat of the sun.

at the same time, the cymbidiums seem to defy the heat & their lush-ousness (yes, i know it’s lusciousness, but i like the idea of being drunk on cymbidiums) is a reproach to the sun & its withering power.  i’ve spent the last two days watering, watering, & have been thinking about water (it seeks its own level — a nasty reprimand, condescending & impertinent) but can you blame it?

the garden frog loves its cool, shady spot under the acacia, water adding to its patina (in fact the air it breathes brings it closer to reality each & every day.)  i would not be surprised if it croaked rustily some day soon.

i  drag the garden hose (75′ of un-kinkable green rubber–it weighs a ton when water is coursing through it) around the backyard from shade to bright sunlight spreading water, water everywhere (but a drop to drink always at my fingertips, mr. coleridge)

the sun pulling the roses to their first bloom of the year (if your year begins in april) & water pulsing in their stems.

the salmon-colored martha washington geranium (only 1 bloom per year) revels in the heat & i must be careful not to over water (geraniums like the heat & the aridity of the santa anas)

wait! was there a point to this post?  water washes away the grit, the grime, the detritus of life (violently in a flood, beautifully as a waterfall, melancholy as a rainy day, refreshing, renewing, revitalizing) all the while seeking its own level (down, down, down.)

bloom (in love)

solandra maxima (cup of gold vine)

at last the cup of gold vine is in bloom.  it has been a tug of war with this plant over the last few years (under water/over water; fertilizer/no-fertilizer; prune/don’t prune,) at least three times i thought i’d killed it, only to see it struggle back to its scraggly, rangy self/a triumph of self-determination & focus not unnoticed or unappreciated by this gardener

the blossom is huge & brilliant (obviously) but the bigger story for me is that it got me to thinking about creativity & how for some people it seems to flow uninterrupted & for others (me, for instance) it comes in spurts & starts, oftentimes needing to lay dormant–all the ingredients mulling around/stewing/composting, a sausage machine extruding its commingled spicy ideas  & ground thoughts  into a neat little skin of whatever form the final product takes.

of course, some thoughts/sparks of an idea come unbidden–they just are & and are there & are welcomed as naturally as a mother to a lost child, others are buried deep & are nurtured along (fed/tended/hoed/talked to/weeded/mulched/watered/a dollop of steer manure around the roots for good measure) or completely forgotten until, surprisingly they bud & bloom & oof! they must be expressed (that struggle too is creative–the form it takes, the way you manage it–or not.)

acacia (species unidentified by the author)

but these blooms, these spring blooms (our glorious climate & its early spring) dresses/ball gowns designed for just one brilliant royal dance each year, promenaded to the delight of the assembled guests are

[i stood up & walked away just now to look out the window at the rain & listen to its running patter on the roof & its rapid descent through the downspout--our house a giant water feature -- de rigueur maintenant pour la maison à la mode]

for me the embodiment of creativity/its one-way nature; its inexorable nature lies in each of us/a call to arms that only some hear & answer but that all embody.

exhortation:  listen, listen closely, when it calls/knocks/honks/toots/tweets/vibrates/rings/runs you down, answer  it & watch it bloom.