One day I saw an entire patch of dead sunflowers. Hundreds and hundreds of them still standing but withered and brown, their heads all dropped in surrender the same direction as if they had met their end as the result of some mass suicide or a Medusa like sighting that instead of stone transformed them all to decay at the exact same moment. The image of this field has haunted me and even without effort I can still conjure it up as if I were back against that bus window what must have been two months ago now. For a long time I could not figure out what it was that made me so sad about this sight. Sunflowers are not among my preferred flowers and the enjoyment I get from them is mostly in that they remind me of one of my best friends who considers them among her own reasons d’être. No, it was not the sunflowers themselves at all that saddened me but instead the skeleton of a beautiful thing lost.
As the epitome of a hopeless romantic, I love flowers. Neatly pruned blooms along sidewalks, mismatched grocery store bouquets on sale for $9.99, untamed and unnamed wildflowers in a field, a single tiny blossom poking through a crack in a slab of concrete, I’ll take them all. Peonies, orchids and poppies are best but even carnations will do. When I have been lucky enough to receive flowers I have done everything I can to make them last. Sniping stems, adding plant food and goggling the species for tips and optimal lighting suggestions. Of course within a couple weeks they all die and I find myself a bit more upset about this than is probably healthy or normal. I also (in true failure-to-let-go fashion) refuse to throw them away. I leave them there until all of the petals have fallen off, the stems have dried out and hardened and the water in the vase has begun to grow some type of white mold. I refuse to admit that my flowers are gone, still hesitant to admit that I have lost such a beautiful thing.
This peculiarity of mine is also why I find myself sliding into depression whenever I leave San Diego. I am sorry to withdraw from a magnificent life of laughter, sunshine, kindred spirits, and ocean spray, sad to have such a beautiful thing taken back from me much as mother nature takes back her flowers. The first weeks back in Arizona, I find myself in mourning, afraid I have lost something and can’t get it back. This anxiety over having something beautiful and then losing it has nurtured my desperate wish for a better memory. Lamenting my departure from San Diego, I recall sand in the bottom of the shower, watching life unfold in the reflection of the mirrored wall in Emma and Brittany’s kitchen and the exact ratio of powdered sugar to butter in Laguna 201 homemade frosting. A vivid and carefully cultivated memory is something that can never be lost or taken from me and I take comfort in the clarity of these details.
This is why I try to take pictures as often as possible, and more importantly why I write. Because despite my most ardent and unyielding attempts to notice every detail and lock it away for later, so often my memory fails and I can no longer remember if the vase of flowers was
blue or green and whether we were in Lauren or Erin’s car when we brought home our Christmas tree. So I write. I write about the way that traveling has, for the first time in my life, given me a kind of solidarity with my own thoughts that makes being alone sometimes not feel lonely anymore. I write about bath room talks with roommates where alcohol loosened our tongues and brought the swelling on our egos down. I write about people I meet on planes and how the clocks on the buses are always inexplicably set to the wrong time. I write and I take pictures in the hopes that when this incredible adventure is over I will not feel that I have lost something that I had and loved but instead gained a collection of glorious experiences, carefully documented to later supplement omissions in rose colored cob-webby memories.
This is why I try to take pictures as often as possible, and more importantly why I write. Because despite my most ardent and unyielding attempts to notice every detail and lock it away for later, so often my memory fails and I can no longer remember if the vase of flowers was
blue or green and whether we were in Lauren or Erin’s car when we brought home our Christmas tree. So I write. I write about the way that traveling has, for the first time in my life, given me a kind of solidarity with my own thoughts that makes being alone sometimes not feel lonely anymore. I write about bath room talks with roommates where alcohol loosened our tongues and brought the swelling on our egos down. I write about people I meet on planes and how the clocks on the buses are always inexplicably set to the wrong time. I write and I take pictures in the hopes that when this incredible adventure is over I will not feel that I have lost something that I had and loved but instead gained a collection of glorious experiences, carefully documented to later supplement omissions in rose colored cob-webby memories.
* Image from We heart it tumbler
