Deep Waters: My Last WordPress Blogpost January 24, 2024

Dear Readers, I am proud to have had this space to share my work and my writing prompts since 2009. And I thank you for following me here, for all of your wonderful comments and likes, and for taking the time to read my work.

I hope you will follow me to my Substack account, The Writing Catalyst, where I will continue to post my writing and the prompts that inspired them. I’ve subscribed you to the new newsletter free for three months. After that, you can continue to subscribe for free, or pay for a subscription; you can also unsubscribe. The new Substack site allows me to offer virtual writing workshops, podcasts, and so much more. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Thank you for being here with me all these years. Keep writing. Keep reading. And please, keep in touch.

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(The prompt: This piece was written in response to Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck”)

“Don’t write about her again,” my inner adolescent says, and he sounds like he’s almost pleading. “Nobody wants to hear about our dead mommy anymore. Especially me.”

It’s too early for a visit from this boy: 8:00 a.m. at the kitchen table. My journal is open in front of me, the pen is poised above the paper, my arthritic hand still stiff from sleep. Not you again, I think, with your full, dark eyebrows and your messy head of wavy hair.  

“Are you just going to ignore me?” he asks. He’s in that baby blue Disney sweatshirt, the one with the peeling white silkscreen of the castle on it. The sleeves are too short for him, but he never takes it off, even in the summer, because it brings out his eyes. Someday, I want to tell him, you’ll visit that castle in southern Germany, the one that inspired Walt Disney, and you’ll be so sick with food poisoning, and so filled with sorrow for the lonely gay king who built that place, you’ll never want to return. But at his age, it’s still a poster on his wall with a Hallmark cliché at the bottom; at his age, that castle is still a beautiful dream.

“I’m trying to write in my journal,” I say.

“I know,” he snaps back. “And I’m telling you not to write about her again.”

I’m remembering now the journal from our sophomore year in high school. Notebook paper bound by a simple green cover. We spent 15 minutes writing every period in my Psychology of Literature class. It was our private work; we didn’t have to share anything we didn’t want to share. I wrote a lot about John Lepsin, about his ice blue eyes and black hair, his big beautiful nose. I wrote tortured unrequited love poems that vacillated between raw desire and fantasies of revenge. But I never wrote about Mama. Only once. Something like, “Things have been pretty weird around the house. Mom has this memory disease and…I don’t want to write about this.” And so, I never did. Until my senior year, when I plagiarized the ending of a piece from the NYTimes Magazine my brother had shared with me. And then again in college, when I couldn’t write about anything else.

“I’m your scribe now,” I tell my younger self. “I’ve filled volumes of notebooks with sorrow and longing, with guilt and shame.”

“I know!” he’s says, slapping his pretty young hands down onto the table. “It’s too much! Stop already. Enough! Basta!” He sounds just like her when he says that, and I giggle a little. “What?” he says, suppressing a giggle himself. We are on the verge of busting up, like two kids in church.

“C’mon!” he says. “I mean it.”

But I am already writing. Mom would have been 100 today. He groans. If she would have lived this long, she probably would have been a mess.

“A beautiful mess,” he says out loud.

“Like you,” I say.

“Like you,” he says.

And then we dive down into the wreck together. It’s my job to shine a light for him. He closes his eyes, holds his breath, and down we go.

Still Wishing: Part Two October 3, 2023

Try not to play the same game you’ve always played: the swooning beauty in love with the butch guy. Try not to make up stories about who he is or who you are or who you could become together. Because that twenty-year gap and his job downtown are already working against any kind of a future, really.

Try not to think of the future. When are you happiest anyway? Is it when you look at the graph on your investments page and watch the line travel up and then down again? Is it when you think about ordering a turkey for Thanksgiving or imagine boarding the plane next week? No, it’s only when you are in the moment, when you look up at the floating clouds of fog, or sing along with Kylie’s new song, the gears on the car shifting with the beat, the wheels strong and smooth beneath you.

Try to be present today, when he is home with what you hope isn’t Covid, when he calls you gorgeous, when he sends an emoji of a little yellow face kissing a heart in your direction. Can you allow yourself to dream about feeling his skin again without worrying about what he wants, what fantasy you should try to be to deserve love and affection? Can you state what you want instead? Skin against skin, his a French vanilla, his lips like a split plum. Maybe you can find your way back to desire without thinking about traveling the world together or having romantic dinners downtown. Maybe you can do again what you have always been so good at doing: creating an island in the middle of all this chaos for the two of you. Maybe you can stop berating your silver hair or your softening neck and embody the body he sees, the one you still feel inside these older bones, these sore tendons, this stiff back. You don’t have to be Snow white singing into the well anymore; your handsome prince isn’t coming to find you. But maybe you can meet yourself and your lover somewhere in the middle of middle age, maybe you can be coconut cream with flecks of raspberry, maybe you can explore this delicious treat the way you explore a perfect piece of cake. Not chocolate this time, but French vanilla. Something sweeter than you’re used to.

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The writing prompt this time was the ice cream menu below, and a report from The Guardian that research shows ice cream makes you happy. You can also see the prompt from an earlier post, which is referenced in the title, here.

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· PEANUT BUTTER SUPREME—Three dips of peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with peanut butter topping, hot fudge, Reese’s Pieces, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MELTDOWN—Three dips of our creamy vanilla topped with hot fudge & warm caramel over a split banana

· DIETER’S REVENGE—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, crushed Oreos, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MINT CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—For a cool treat, three dips of old-fashioned mint chocolate chip ice cream covered with hot fudge, crushed Oreo cookies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· GORILLA’S TREAT—Three dips of fresh banana ice cream over a split banana covered with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

· SOUTHERN TREAT—Three dips of our famous butter pecan ice cream (made the old-fashioned way) covered with butterscotch topping, chopped almonds, whipped cream and a cherry.

· NUTTY BUDDY—Three dips of our famous peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with hot fudge, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· CMP—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, marshmallow topping, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· TRIPLE CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—Three dips of rich chocolate ice cream (our own recipe) topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MOCHA MADNESS—Three dips of our homemade coffee ice cream topped with chocolate sauce, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· BANANA SPLIT —Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream over a split banana, topped with pineapple, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

: Still Wishing: Part Two

Tiny but Mighty June 14, 2023

When we left Venice, everyone was gathering portside, where cocktails were being served in colorful acrylic glasses. And even though the beautiful old city was glowing gold in the evening sunlight, most of the men on this gay cruise were chatting and flirting and ignoring the gleaming facade of St. Mark’s, and they barely noticed the pointed tower on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

My friend Ron was occupied with someone half his age, so I wandered up to the bow where I could be alone, a rarity on a cruise ship, and noticed the thick cable attached to the tiny tugboat below. Though they are problematic in so many ways, what I love about being on a cruise is that you feel the immensity of the machine beneath you; it’s hard not to feel awe at the engineering feat of such huge ship. But at that moment I was equally aware of the tough and powerful little boat below that was safely guiding us—pulling us, actually—out to the Adriatic Sea.

I’ve read that tugboats are often driven by a single captain, and that person can spend entire days without interacting closely with another human. In other words, it’s a fine line between solitude and loneliness in the day of a tugboat operator. Perhaps that’s why the man driving this tugboat looked up at me; even from a distance, I could see his head turn toward me and nod. 

It was one of those times in my life when I was fully in the moment, when I felt the beautiful connection to a stranger that always feels spiritual to me, inexplicable. Those little moments that remind me how humans are connected in ways we often cannot put into words.

My love for this tugboat, and this tugboat captain in particular, was wrapped up in my love of tugboats in general: tugboats crashing through the ice to create a safe pathway in the Arctic; tugboats pushing a ship 180 degrees, or backwards; tugboats bright red and waiting in the harbor below the Oakland Bay Bridge ready to fight a fire on any ship. They are, I think, heroic.

As a child I remember Little Toot being a favorite story, because as a diminutive boy, I was always drawn to stories about something small that made itself known as strong and capable, like the tiny people who live inside a dust speck in Horton Hears a Who (A person is a person no matter how small). Tugboats feel like more than a metaphor somehow. They embody something I want to believe about the capability and the strength of what may seem like small, insignificant people, places and things.

Anyway, that moment in Venice is etched into my memory forever, because when the cable was released, and the ship was safely out of the harbor, just before the tugboat turned back, the captain waved at me and blew the deep, throaty horn of the little boat below and I squealed with delight. I clapped with glee, just like a child.

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The prompts for this piece included the attached Google doc (“Tugboats: Tiny but Mighty”) and the Google slideshow, “Tugs.”

Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13ddqLm_IN6VKtEIdlsKTspyDfSVg69mxbwc4zNTNcUM/edit?usp=sharing

Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10YVlf2tHGoUaqcAdoAnIrF-KAUXpjFGSCu4Vv1JF1YA/edit?usp=sharing

Dia de los Muertos November 2, 2022

I imagine them together now, in a way that might seem childlike to you. She with her wavy hair tucked behind her ears, and he with those thin lips that disappeared when he smiled. They were just bone chips and dust in Ziplock bags the last time I saw them. I was surprised how different their ashes looked: his were brown and heavy, hers were light and soft grey. We mixed them together.

We threw white roses into the water, something I learned from the Brazilian goddess Yemanjá, via Africa. It felt ancient and important. The pounding surf washed the flowers up against our bare shins, along with the ashes, soaking our rolled up jeans.

Sometimes, when I think about them now, they could be calacas, the bony espiritos from Posada’s drawings. Mama could be Catrina, with her big hat and long gown. Pop could be wearing a scarf, smiling now without lips, driving a sports car. In my dreams, for years after Pop died, they were always hanging out together, offering me champagne, reassuring me. We took long train rides together, in which they inquired about my siblings like gossipy old aunts, and once Mama showed up to a party to try the brownies I had made, because she wanted to see what I’d done with her recipe.

I can’t say that I believe they are in Heaven, but I also don’t believe they are nowhere at all. Reincarnated? Maybe. I feel like their spirits are still somewhere fleshy and warm, like those sticky nights I spent with my first lover in Mexico all those years ago. The ceiling fan whirling and whirling, the sheets cool and slightly damp, our naked bodies entangled, sleep fractured, nearly impossible. We were floating together, but we were also part of that mattress, that tiled floor. The rest of the world had fallen away. That’s how I think it is for them now. Two lovers, alone at last.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was a “collected poem”: a poem created from many lines from several different poems. See below.

Grief

Anything you lose comes ’round in another form

Pink roses and white roses

those words were all that was left

Certain phrases, topics, must be approached with care

People are good

they offer up their pain

I imagine you

When you died

What’s unsaid is palpable as dignity, as death

All motion stopped when he died

Long-faced irises.

when you had to be helped on with your shoes

before you leapt off

Mums

Anything you lose comes round in another form

When grief sits with you

you hold life like a face

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

and giant sunflowers

I will love you

Pink roses and white roses

Anything you lose

again

“Grief” contains excerpts from the following poems:

“Cantaloupe,” by Lee Robinson

“April,” by Judy Bebelaar

“The Thing Is,” by Ellen Bass

“Moment of Inertia,” by Debra Spencer

“Making Things Right,” by Barbara Bloom

“Return I,” by Elisabeth Stevens

“What People Give You,” by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

“Unmarked Boxes,” by Rumi

Magical Thinking June 20, 2022

My sister recently shared a modern version of Disney’s Cinderella trailer from 1950. What I imagine was originally a corny 1950’s soundtrack for the two minute trailer was replaced by a modern remix, no doubt to reach a more contemporary audience. “They ruined it,” she said. Earlier, we had serenaded her fiancé with an a capella version of “I know you (I’ve walked with you once upon a dream)” doing our best to harmonize. “Very nice!” he said.

If you’re not familiar with it, the narrative of the song is love at first sight, with a kind of 1950’s emo set of lyrics that confirm the person of your dreams can literally appear before your eyes, and so you should trust your gut when it comes to that first hello.

After another glass of wine, I soothed my sister’s soul by finding the original version of the trailer, complete with a late 1940’s choir singing that very song and nailing the crescendos, as only those hired to sing on a Disney soundtrack can. “That’s more like it!” my sister said, then busied herself with the dishes.

I watched it again, with the volume turned down, and remembered how fantastic that film was to me when I was just a little baby gay boy. The magic of the fairy godmother, the rags-to-gorgeous-gown transformation, the sweet mice as friends, all that pink and blue, and the gleaming white castle in the distance. It’s the prince of course, who steals the movie, with his broad shoulders and thick dark hair. The prince, who really says nothing except, “May I have this dance?” and then literally sweeps old Cindy off her feet.

You know how it ends: the glass slipper, the evil stepmother and selfish stepsisters outdone by kindness and courage, and of course, happily ever after. Boy was I stuck on that one my entire life. My sister—who is planning her third wedding—doesn’t like it when I get academic and psychoanalyze fairytales. She detests the violence of the brothers Grimm, and prefers the sanitization of Disney to the real thing. Any argument I might have made in the past about the meaning of the story—that sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are allegories about young women growing into sexual beings, who can only be awakened by handsome young men—were dismissed as too serious or no fun. And she’s right, of course. I am too serious, and sometimes, at least when analyzing narratives, I am not much fun at all.

I’m still waiting for a Disney movie about a same sex crush and ends with the main characters going off to separate colleges in the end (like real life). But no matter how much Disney disagrees with Florida’s conservative governor, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What I want to say is this: Cinderella fucked me up. It fucked me up. Because I grew up believing in love at first sight, and happily ever after, and that big one: a man will come along and sweep you off your feet and take care of you for the rest of your life. I spent my 40’s with someone completely ill-suited for me because we were both convinced that fate kept bringing us together (and maybe it did, but now I know it was trying to teach me something very different from what Cinderella taught me).

I much prefer films like Pixar’s Up . At least that one is more like real life: grief and broken dreams and the willingness to love again, to keep your heart open, to go on another adventure. To not become a bitter old man because you have loved and lost. Let’s sing the theme song to that movie, shall we? Let’s all harmonize to that one instead.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was a music prompt: Orla Gartland singing, “Why am I Like This?”

Love was blind, but now I see March 3, 2022

The idea behind this prompt was to freshen a cliché and have some fun with it. The original phrase is “Love is blind.” But I thought it would be fun to take out the word “blind” and try filling in the blank as many times as possible.

Love is _____________(not blind:, but what other ways might it be disabled or challenged/challenging?)

We all came up with lists. We read a few from our lists, and then chose one and ran with it. We wrote for about ten minutes.

Here are a few from my list:

Love is a cry baby

a gutless bully

an old porn star

a one note wonder

a night of bad karaoke

a prude with coffee breath

a pile of dog shit on the hot pavement

a terrible rash 

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What I wrote is below.

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Love decided to go into hiding, at least that’s what I tell myself. But maybe I’ve stuffed Love in a box in the attic and am hoping he won’t be able to get out again. The last I heard, Love got run over by an SUV; it was a hit and run, and Love broke several bones, was in a wheelchair for a while. When we last spoke, Love was limping around, but was driving again, running errands and healing bones.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t I who ran over Love and just kept driving, but sometimes I wish it was. Don’t think poorly of me, it’s just a metaphor. Love was always so good at taking away my agency, my personhood. Love loved to call me a bitch and a little girl. Love was toxic masculinity in the flesh, and I let him rule me with his deep voice and big dick. Love is really just an abused little boy, watching his father throw his mother through a sliding glass door. Love was only three when they left him in daycare all day at the casino, and he had to pretend he was four (because that was the minimum age). Love was almost saved by a social worker when he was 14, but then his mother said she was abused when she was a child, and Love fell under her evil spell and decided to feel sorry for her.

And now you probably feel sorry for Love, don’t you? See how insidious Love is? Even though he took my youth and splattered my romantic dreams all over the windshield, you still feel sorry for him (and not me). That’s okay, though. I know the real story, and Love wasn’t worth saving. It was either Love or me: there was only room for one of us in the lifeboat. So I pushed Love into the water. Don’t worry. Love can swim. He’s already on another shore destroying another island. Love is relentless, that’s what Love is, but at least he’s not my mine anymore.

To Dream or Not To Dream? (That is never the question.) February 8, 2021

He’s dreaming of Italy again. A seductive CNN video and a Forbes article recently revealed that in Biccari, a small town in Southern Italy, houses are for sale for 10,000 Euro, about $12,000 USD. Biccari is in the mountains of Northern Puglia, and is a two-hour drive to the closest city and major airport (that would be Bari: population 325,000). Biccari itself only has about 1,200 residents, and is surrounded by mountains and lakes, where the residents like to picnic on local artisan wine, cheeses, meats and bread. Except for a short, sometimes snowy, winter, Biccari looks like a fantasy.

And that’s just what it is: a fantasy, though he could actually borrow the money from his retirement fund. (He’s always been better at fantasy than reality.) Still, it’s a long shot. He knows this, even as he cuts and pastes the mayor’s email address, composing a letter in his head. Senore, I am sure you’ve had thousands of inquiries, but I wonder, how does one go about acquiring a beautiful little casa in Biccari?

He remembers the trip to his grandparents birthplace in Corleto Perticara, how he took the train to Potenza, (not far from Biccari, really, nothing is very far away in Italy). How he rented a car and wore that cute new jacket with the hood, the one he had purchased in Amsterdam the year before. How he and his third cousin somehow managed to communicate, though his Italian was rudimentary at best, and her English was non-existent. They could have been siblings: the same light eyes, the milky skin, the wavy light brown hair.

He met the only other gay person in town (the florist, of course, it was a cliché made for an old movie), and he remembered how on his way back to Potenza he stopped to let a flock of sheep cross the windy road, led only by a dutiful border collie; in the distance he could see the nearby hilltop towns. Why would anyone ever leave here? he wondered. But then he remembered this rented Fiat, and his little jacket, and for the first time he understood that his grandparents had wanted more for him.

He thought of what it would be like to actually live there: six hours to Rome, one gay friend, his cousin’s beau working the swing-shift at the plastic bag factory. There was fresh pressed olive oil; they sent him home with that, and a big bottle of homemade limoncello, but how long could he be happy in such a place before getting bored or cynical, or becoming the subject of salacious gossip? Back then, he had wondered and worried over this, just as he did now, dreaming of Biccari. The quiet streets and the campanile with those dependable bells, the ubiquitous old men in the square, the promise of a quiet world with less traffic, less technology, less stress. Maybe a garden with a lemon tree. A little dog. And a cat who is good at catching mice.

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The writing prompt that inspired this post is the poem, “Odessa,” by Patricia Kirkpatrick

Happier Times June 22, 2020

 

The prompt this time was Sinead O’Connor’s song, “In this Heart.” You can click on the YouTube link above to hear it.

What I wrote is below.

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I arrive for dinner, and he’s a gentleman, as always, his face lit up like a child.

“Some wine?”

We sit on the sectional, and in about three minutes, I’m climbing on him like a puppy, some fire ignited that’s impossible to control now.

He’s so long. His thigh is longer than my entire arm; when we’re lying together, I trail my hand down, down, down, and I still can’t reach his knee. I feel like I’m climbing a mountain, or trying to stretch the canvas sails on a huge boat.

“I know,” he says. “It’s a lot.”

We’re two men in our fifties, but when his glasses come off, and I look into his eyes, we’re both fifteen again, all limbs and hormones.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he says, while I’m lying on top of him.

“I did,” I say, “but I can’t keep my hands off you.”

I keep thinking he’s going to have bad breath or stinky armpits, but like a grownup, he has always showered, and he’s rinsed with mouthwash before I arrive. Wiped down the counters, straightened the throw pillows on the couch. Even his beard smells like soap. “You shampoo it, of course,” he says in his soft Egyptian accent, and then we’re kissing again.

I’m lost in his limbs in a way that’s unfamiliar, yet strangely comfortable. It’s easy in a way I don’t question. The little mole on his left side, the dusting of soft hair on his shoulder blades, the curls of silver in a cloud of black at his hairline. You would think I’d be humping him like a chihuahua, but I’m content rolling onto my back, or having him pull me on top, simply because I’m flooded with Oxytocin. Pillow talk, solid, wet kisses. I dare not tell him I’m trying to get as much as I can in case this ends soon, fizzles out. Tomorrow’s boytoy could easily distract this hairy, hunky giant lying beneath me.

I tell him it’s so good, but I won’t say that I’ve been starving for years now. That erotic massages and cheap sauna sex can’t fill this chasm I carry around, this nagging ache to be touched. I’m at the buffet now, loading up plate after plate, filling my mouth with everything delicious. I feel insatiable. I’m not moving, except for the occasional breath, or long sweet gaze, then I’m back again, back again, I’m back again for more.

 

First Visitor April 30, 2020

In this difficult time during the Covid-19 pandemic, I gathered a group of trusted writers and asked for their help. Knowing that my writing workshops would have to go online, we did a “practice run,” and wrote together for a few hours. The prompt that produced the piece below is tried and true: listening to Breyten Breytenbach’s poem, “Your Letter.” See that prompt here.

What I wrote:

Jose comes into the apartment wearing a mask. “You don’t have to wear that for me,” I say. “But please do whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

He takes it off, looking relieved. Seeing his face after nearly three weeks of self-quarantine (except for two stressful trips to the grocery store)—seeing that beautiful Aztec nose, his wide smile—is like a lifeline.

We’re still here, I think. We’re here in my living room, together.

On the trail below Twin Peaks, we walk single file, trying to stay six feet apart. Seeing the familiar dusting of dark hair on his caramel colored calves feels like a miracle.

We are walking on a trail we have walked on before; he is telling me a familiar story about his romantic relationship, and the details that used to fire up my defense for him, now feel like a mantra or a prayer. Sacred. His body close enough to touch. The lovely sing-song of his Spanish accent. His breath.

“Everyone is afraid,” I hear myself saying, surprising myself, because now I’m defending his fickle boyfriend.

He turns to look back at me with kindness. It’s physical, his gaze. It holds me the way a parent holds a child: lovingly, unassuming. And we are only here, in this moment, with a view of the city skyline rising bright white into a blue, blue sky. We are here. Both of us. Bathed in gratitude.

 

 

My Life in Flowers March 11, 2020

The prompt this time was the flower prompt: everyone in the workshop is given a flower that has recently bloomed in San Francisco, and we write in response. For a detailed description of the prompt, see this earlier post.

And just to give you some context for the tone of the following piece, which I wrote last week: we do this exercise every year (and I often do it on my international and Hawaiian retreats as well). So for me, this is a reminder of another year passing. I’ve posted several pieces on this blog in response to this prompt. See those links—as well as what I recently wrote—below.

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/flower-fanatic/

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/flower-fanatic-part-ii/   ____________________________________________________________________

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time —and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.

-Georgia O’Keeffe

World, I am your slow guest,
one of the common things
that move in the sun and have
close, reliable friends
in the earth, in the air, in the rock.               

-William Stafford 

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I want to tell you a story I haven’t told you before, but I fear I’m all out of stories now. No, really. Perhaps my head is just so filled with news about pandemics and Democratic presidential candidates that there’s little room left for stories that involve flowers, but I think it’s more likely that I’ve told you all of my stories already.

How I drove across the country with my parents on our big move and got stuck in a blizzard in Wyoming. How when we arrived in California at the end of January there were pink blossoms on the trees and mustard flowers growing waist high between the Live Oaks. How my next door neighbors grew orange roses that smelled like citrus, and in early April, the purple irises grew tall and opened lilac colored petals every year: dependable, elegant, the one small joy in my mother’s monotonous days.

Later, I discovered gardenias in Los Angeles—entire paths lined with bushes—so fragrant, they produced a near trance state, and how later, my one big love floated them in a bowl next to the bed we slept in together. In California, I learned that wisteria, with their old and snarled branches, thrive every spring, drooping under the weight of their blossoms, buzzing with bumble bees.

I learned about the Dahlia Garden in Golden Gate Park —about as close to Oz as I was ever going to get—how they came from Mexico originally, how tubers were different from bulbs, how jonquils and narcissus could bloom even in the rainiest February. I want to tell you why lilacs make me melancholy, and why Cecil Brunner roses—tiny pink and candy sweet—remind me of permanence, though flowers are the very epitome of impermanence, and no matter how many babies come into my life, and friends and relatives die, I still have to learn that nothing lasts forever over and over again. Frankly, I’m tired of that lesson, just like I’m tired of telling the same stories over and over again.

What irony, I think now, as I put this pen to paper, that the flowers come back year after year, the cloud of lemon-scented acacia blooming along the back driveway, the Japanese cherry blossoms on 19th Street between Castro and Hartford, the Victoria Box clusters dangling over Sanchez Street near Duboce Park, even the tulips below the 1960’s sign that marks the aging development I live in  (“Vista San Francisco”); they will burst back to life year after year only to die again. Still, I keep loving them. Every. Single. Year. And I keep telling these stories over and over again, with these flowers, these old companions, as my backdrop.