The Beauty Of Weeds
There's beauty in the weeds. There's a beauty in that which none desire; there's a beauty in graveling on. Nothing waters them except the occasional rain spurt that only lasts a few minutes. This foliage prevails; somehow, they live and thrive, all nestled together in a section of unkempt pasture. Yes, there is beauty in their thorns and shallow root systems. Critters come to hide behind their height, yet none are permitted. They stand there, night and day, blooming, but nothing ever comes for them, nothing more than a scoff. We like a manicure and scissor-trimmed edges; we like daises, not the dandelion. I think about the weeds and the flowers and the differences between them. Walking Iggy around the neighborhood, I breathe through my eyes, taking in the Victorian and Colonial homes, the Farmhouse, and Cottage. There is a certain elegance, some built of stone, just perfect. The large Oak trees that line the spaces between the street and sidewalk give shade on warmer days, and in the fall, their sprawling crowns drop leaves in a one-hundred-foot diameter. Some homes have creeks behind them, and I recall my old home on Woodlawn with a creek in the backyard and of my hammock where I would lay and read Dostoevsky in the sun in between two mighty oaks. I was writing my first novel then and the air in early spring was as if a great thaw was taking place. I had spent the winter writing like a madman, re-writing and editing, tuning this, and adjusting that. I planned to beat the sticks and hit the bricks of New York City. I did. That will come later. I left that one-bedroom home where I had found it and said farewell to the peach tree, which I initially believed to be nothing more than a weed. Imagine my surprise, no espalier required. One day, the "weed" in the back started to produce small red and yellow fruit. I felt I needed nothing more out of life.
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Angelina lost herself in the midst of a waring famine.
She decided to be alone and refrain from permitting new entrants. A cross-country move was what she needed. Starting to start over, she plotted her life like a bell curve, and she meant to live in the middle. The outliers were statistically unimportant, as life is lived in the middle, as live is lived in the center with quotients in the thirty-four. She would allow certain intrusions but only to those she deemed worthy, making clear the strict inelasticity of her heart; she was clear concerning her voluntary effort to withhold. Her ventricles closed roads. The flow of blood carrying love choked like a kink of the hose or a tight turn of the spigot. Closed off, sure, but if a woman needs anything it is surely the affections of a passionate lover.
Her first week, she found Franco. She found him on a dating app and thought that maybe this town wasn’t as dry as she had imagined. Despite her desire to be alone, she felt a certain warmth in his winds, in his softer breezes in the evening, promising a warm spring and an even warmer summer. She could sweat out the past in newfound lands of spontaneity, finding new scents in the scenery of Oak and Poplar trees, in the shapes of what felt so foreign but still felt like her life back home.
At his apartment, they laid on his orange Gabbeh. After one week, that same orange Gabbeh covered her hardwood floor with a runner by the bathroom and some wool by the front door. He was laying a foundation, pouring cement, raising her with each grain spilled, leveling her, pulling her in with each push of the screed. Franco was falling, slipping, heels over his head.
On the banks of Mill Creek, they spread a blanket and watched the birds. In silence, they sat, the wind blowing through them. The trees across the water swayed lightly, their branches like one hundred waving hands, welcoming new lovers. Franco kissed her while she sat crisscrossed with her hands in her lap. She was looking up the stream; he pulled her face toward him, planted his lips on hers, and breathed in the essence of her being. She kissed him back and gripped his arm. They pulled away, smiling.
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There’s a beauty in the weeds because they’re patient. They grow fast, but they wait. They wait for dirt fields and cracks in the sidewalk. They drink little, but they take up so much space. They bloom just like the flowers, and they bloom just as bright. Some lawns are sprawling wildflowers with no grass and no need to waste water. There are some weeds here and there, naturally. Like an agreement has been struck with Mother Nature herself: I turn the dirt and build a home; you sow your seeds and grow. The grandest of deals, a deal with the devil if you think it. Iggy sniffs each base of each oak tree, and I fill myself with the beauty declaring itself on Thorne Street. The way home is more homes and some lots overtaken completely. I wish to share this walk as I believe most things are better when experienced with another. It is almost like the soul has a shape and needs to fit adjacent, connected to another. A tessellation of two shapes repeating. The shape of your soul is but one of these designs, a mystery intentionally unsolved as no man can dissect himself any more than he can see his true face. The shape and resolution of a soul are confirmed by another who knows it, by the perceptions of those whose souls you recognize. The self is but conscience; the soul is something else.
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While passing parks or patches of grass, Angelina would grab Franco by his shirt sleeve in compulsory enlistment. Angelina needed help trudging through the weeds, ardently looking for a single four-leaf clover. It was not luck that drove her searches but rather that inexplicable feeling of uniqueness, the clover unrepeated in all of nature, the shape, virtu. A four-leaf clover is a tricky little devil to find. They can sometimes all look the same even if all their shapes differ. One day, while dragging her fingers through a patch, she stumbled on a clover with four leaves. She could hardly contain her excitement. Angelina knew of the beauty of weeds; she countered malcontent with affection, flying in the face of every contradiction as if to proclaim proudly, unequivocally, that beauty will not be shuttered even if she’s the only one who sees it. She was brave in all her proclamations, fearless with a wealth of courage. If she were not a human, she would be the most beautiful bloom in springtime, even if no one noticed.
Yes! She exclaimed.
First four-leaf in the Valley. I think I’ll laminate it and use it as a bookmark.
Franco tried to contain his secondhand excitement. She had been looking for one for some time, and seeing her fulfilled inspired something inside of him. Franco thought to himself,
“what is this feeling?”
Why is her fulfillment suddenly so important? It’s a tad cliché, but her smile was all the compensation needed for any act or contemplation. He would climb a mountain peak to pick her a flower, graze the ocean floor picking her pebbles if it meant seeing her smile.
Franco found one of Angelina’s notebooks that had not a spot of ink or graphite on any of the pages and wrote her a note on the very first page. His first note consisted of casual tellings of the day and a brief note of something more profound. He dated the page and gave it to her to read. She immediately read the words and smiled. They spent some time passing the notebook back and forth, handing it off every couple of days, to which they always read the entries in front of the other. Franco taped some flowers to one page, and she taped the tickets to the first movie they saw together on another.
While they lay on the daybed, held up by the frame she bought, and he painted. Angelina would pluck Franco’s hair from his arm, beard, or any of his body parts. She thoroughly enjoyed picking the strands that had gone gray, like finding a four-leaf clover. It was a minor sting each strand pulled from their follicle. Franco could stand it but liked to wince after each pull to show her he was sacrificing something. It was a rather odd habit of Angelina’s, but Franco liked it. He liked the attention she paid; he wanted the closeness it required, the closeness required when holding her, brushing the hair from her face so he could have an unobstructed view of her smoldering green eyes. Her shape fits his snugly, like a scissor truss that creates a tessellation. Her shape was the opposite of his, and while one may claim that this proves incompatibility, I would argue that this makes them a mirrored image. She was on the other side. Franco saw her as good; as a model rule follower, he thought she could temper him. Concerning unethical behavior and bad habits, Franco no longer stole from self-checkout or smoked those cigarettes he loved so much. She never asked him to do these things. He took it upon himself voluntarily, and she reached him regarding a moral code and healthy behaviors.
He made her a letter bracelet and one for himself. The letters arranged formed something for them to share. It was their little secret, hidden away from the world, a secret only they knew. It was spoken like a passcode; it always brought them back to the center.
Franco sat on the floor, shoveling dirt into a pot with his hands. He was re-potting Angelina’s house plants while she cooked Baby bok choy and sole fillets. The sun was beginning to make his marvelous descent, lighting the passing day with a glow of orange haze. The last rays cut through her western-facing windows, and the night was making haste. He knew he was in love with her. The sentence crashed against his closed mouth and lived mute, shuttered behind his lips. Angelina presented her creation with a smile, and Franco washed his hands in the sink. Franco knew he was in love with her, and there was nothing he could do about it.
After dinner, they smoked weed in the dark and talked eye to eye, on their ears undercover. He said he would protect her from intruders with his finger guns and made the action. She lay there in an oversized T-shirt, smiling at his boyish proclivities and desire to be in the nude. Still, under the surface was a tremor of discontent and the approaching boredom that was all too familiar to her. He was showing himself to her unabashed. He showed signs of jealousy and pushed for exclusivity, intending to become a couple. Despite her persistent honesty concerning her intention to remain single, he was selective about exactly what he heard from her. He was immature and was obviously inept at navigating a relationship. Weeks prior, they had a fight, and he spent the week drunk; he was mean, feigning a coldness, acting one way when she knew he was the other. It was then, however, that she knew she could never unsee some of his behaviors and the masks he wore. In her head, it ended. She never would write in their notebook again.
Herein lies the peril for our young friend Franco. Angelina ceased to be a person to him. She became a goal, a prize he felt he must win or risk losing his sight, risk his soul drifting like a ghost through abandoned homes and dilapidated warehouses. He would become a ghost if she rejected him. Love is a burden placed on another, a pressure that can extinguish a small flame, even if the kindling is advantageous and growing. Love is a lack of oxygen, a promise of suffocation. Unless, unless the love is reciprocated in equal measure. Unless the individual fires burn so bright and close, they merge to become one great blaze. Angelina did not love him, no matter how much he loved her.
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I was introduced to a couple, Jim and Suki, through a mutual friend a few days back. Jim laid eyes on Suki while sightseeing through the Japanese countryside. From what I understand, Jim took Suki back to the States, made a family, and had a few kids. Their home was filled with sunlight as I entered and took a chair at the table. I was then introduced to their friends, who were also sitting at the table. I was offered a beer and gladly accepted. The air in their home was light; there was a certain lightness to everything. The conversation flowed, the drinks were drained, talking of this and that. Suki and Jim briefly introduced me to Japanese culture and told me what to expect. They told me of Kotoku-in and Shinjuku, how I should never tip and how the city never sleeps. I would be there in one week's time, shedding summer skin made of blisters and regret. I bring up Jim and Suki because I think I had forgotten how warm some folks are. I entered their home, out of 100-degree weather, with a frozen heart in a frigid state and left thinking that life is long, a flower or a weed, if the bloom is bright enough, there's a beauty to be seen. I felt as though their friends were perceiving their souls, and what they found were flowers. That's what lent the air to their home; the moon's gravity lives inside their kitchen, with the sunlight coming through.
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She said she didn't see a future with Franco; he felt he may not have one of his own. In bed, spilling all his secrets, he recalled how she had never shared any. Franco was flaying himself nightly, in the nude, under gray covers, growing like a weed on her Queen-size mattress. Franco was blooming, and she was the only one he wanted to see yet; he knew she had no space for him. He noticed how full she was with the presence of former lovers and those she'd yet to meet. How could he be integrated amongst them? How important was he to her? On her hierarchy, was his position fixed? Had he hit the ceiling and basement at the same time? Was he just a momentary distraction or a step stool to something better?
Franco knew that she was concealing something. There was a certain darkness in the way she named her crisis, in French, Le Petite Mort. How much of her life had she lost to each preceding lover? She said he could never feel the way she did, and he knew that was the truth. Franco had a past; Franco lived a life as we all must do. Still, Angelina was a rung above him, hanging from the past and dangling in fire.
They carried on in the physical realm, cut off in the emotional. He was dying, his insides in a state of decomposition. The flower she planted in his soul was now nothing more than a weed. She no longer came to see it; she no longer tended to the surroundings. Despite her neglect and indifference, his weed grew and kept growing. He knew it would unless she were to uproot it from the rocky bottom of his soul. A man cannot dissect himself any more than he can see his true face. Franco's soul was intertwined with Angelina's. Angelina did that for him; she let his fit into hers, lending a shelter that felt like home. Inside Angelina, the connection was turning into constriction. Her home overgrown, her home full of weeds.
How many of the notes he left her were mixed up with the ones from former lovers? She kept them, as anyone does, but she kept them in the open almost as if she wanted Franco to find them, thinking it was one he had left her, but the handwriting was different. Did she want him to find them? Was it her way of showing him how insignificant he had become in her life? He couldn't take it each time he would find a new one. Why were the others so prevalent and bountiful while his were kept in an old wooden jewelry box he gave her on her birthday? His presence in her home was sequestered and kept between her dresser and the wall, while the others were almost centerpieces, taking up space on her desk and nightstand.
He was drinking like Bukowski, burning in water drowning in flame. Franco steeped in the sounds of Waiting For The Sun To Leave. What was once hourly contact with Angelina was now a week apart. She wanted to remain his friend, and she was so unaware to the extent that crushed him. The other side of Franco's life was improving. The other side that he spent that whole year neglecting. Paying so close attention to the condition of another, he seldom thought of his own. The sun was not his friend; the moon was his blitzing reminder. The hours of the day passed him in silence, his rambling mind made up of negative thoughts about Angelina, filling in the gaps with the worst-case scenario, assuming the worst of her like she was now an enemy or traitor. A role he cast her in, a title he placed on her like the love he hoisted, all against her will.
Would you tend to a weed?
She gave herself to him one last time. Franco knew he would never have her again, and this was her way of saying goodbye. One last stretch of elongated passion. Her mouth on his, the feeling of their soul's connection. Attached by the mouth and midsection, their souls tangling in the space between the points. He could feel her breasts rubbing on his chest; he could feel her breath in his ear between her gasps and moans. One last time to remember her, a memory on which to recall, to remember the moments of naked intimacy. But Franco did not want to remember; he no longer wished to find her in his mind. He knew he would never have to go looking again. She would always be somewhere on it.
Their bracelets sit in his box, which holds letters from his past loves, a Bobby pin or Polaroid picture, and tickets to this or that—mementos from time past. The bracelets fall to the bottom as Franco tangles with another and crosses his lines farther amidst his own waring famine. The weight of their notebook lessens as time passes. The cover is forgotten, the image fading from her mind. She'll find the notebook and be reminded; he'll find the bracelets and ponder still.
When the clouds hang low in an overcast sky, the sun burns a hole through the airspace—a pinkish remainder, a solution to your longer division.
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The tank was nearing empty as I thought about disappearing. I thought about how badly I wanted to leave and go nowhere. I reminded myself to breathe as my chest lay flat, unsure about what was still alive inside me. I want to reduce myself to molecules and thin my body in a natural separation, with no technology or new world ideas, just a fracturing, a consistent unawareness of reality. I have this little olive tree that I thought was dead and dying. Each day, the tree became dryer; it was just a stick with broken branches. One day, a little green leaf sprouted from the end; imagine my surprise. Even though I watched it die, I still cared for it. I still spoke in soft tones, treating the dry dirt not with water but with a sliver of hope. Maybe perceptions don't matter; maybe the weeds are beautiful, and the flowers are, too. Maybe the beauty exists to spite you, to entice and drive, but can you ever really know it? Is beauty just a metaphor? I write so much about love, yet it's a concept that feels so foreign. I write about the soul, but do I even have one? The way that Franco felt after Angelina found her four-leaf clover is what love is: selfish. We're all selfish; if we weren't, we'd all be dead. I want to reduce myself to molecules living in the air with no conscience or soul, no perceptions or ideas of value, just a weed in the crack of the concrete.
