Transition

There have been a couple of times when flowers seemed to mark an important transition in my life. Roses surrounded me when I moved to the Bay Area. And, orange flowers found me one magical night at the end of a week that seemed to define the beginning of my independence here. 

In the last year and a half I've been working with an energy healer as a part of my journey to...well, healing -- and, during our last session she mentioned something about roses. That I should bring them into my life in different ways. So, I went out and bought myself some roses. At the same time, an orchid I've been nursing for about a year started to re-bloom (!!). 

As the pandemic starts to wane (hopefully, for real this time!) and my life shifts around me, I can't help but hope for the next big positive transition marked by these gorgeous blooms. 

Not A Pretty Girl

"Our father who art in a penthouse

Sits in his 37th floor suite

And swivels to gaze down

At the city he made me in

He allows me to stand and

Solicit graffiti until

He needs the land I stand on

I'm my darkened threshold

Am pawing through my pockets

The receipts, the bus schedules

The urgent napkin poems

The matchbook phone numbers

All of which laundering has rendered pulpy

And strange, loose change and a key

Ask me

Go ahead, ask me

Go ahead, ahead ask me if I care

Go ahead, ask me if I care

I got the answer here

I wrote it down somewhere

I just gotta find it

Somebody and their spray paint got too close

Somebody came on too heavy

Now look at me made ugly

By the drooling letters

I was better off alone

Ain't that the way it is

They don't know the first thing

But you don't know that, how they take that

Until they take the first swing

My fingers are red and swollen from the cold

I'm getting bold in my old age

So go ahead, try the door

It doesn't matter anymore

I know the weak hearted are strong willed

And we are being kept alive

Until we're killed

He's up there

The ice is clinking in his glass

He sends me little pieces of paper

I don't ask

I just empty my pockets and wait

It's not fate

It's just circumstance

I don't fool myself with romance

I just live

Phone number to phone number

Dusting them against my thighs

In the warmth of my pockets

Which whisper history incessantly

Asking me

Where were you

I lower my eyes

Wishing I could cry more

And care less,

Yes it's true,

I was trying to love someone again

I was caught caring

Bearing weight

But I love this city, this state

This country is too large

And whoever's in charge up there

Had better take the elevator down

And put more than change in our cup

Or else we

Are coming

Up"

Ani DiFranco. "Coming Up" Not A Pretty Girl

There was a time in my life when I would listen to Ani DiFranco nonstop. 

It was a time full of dreams and love and sadness and photographs and artists and musicians -- and, of a future just waiting to be written. It was a time that led me here. Somehow. Here. This moment. When I get lost in the lyrics again. And, in the spoken word that finds me. 

It will be important for me to remember this moment.