May 25

No practicing was had today and I am still learning that there are more ways than tapping keys and pulling strings to grow as an artist.

Here is how your strings sparkle in high registers: trying strawberry rhubarb pie for the first time. Here is how you cast shadows over your words: standing face to face with a Titan arum (which, I learned, is significantly larger than any flower I have ever had the privilege of meeting). Here is how you say I am leaving and I love you: a carton three-quarters full of eggs.

The color blue bell, surprisingly, is more purple and grey than it is blue. Muscari are commonly called grape hyacinths, though they should not be confused with actual hyacinths. They can also be called bluebells, but for some regions, a bluebell means bluebonnet, which must mean actually calling a Muscari by name remains somewhat of a mystery.

I think of my orchids and hyacinths and bamboo, which have real people names, and are sitting at home, grasping at the weak light that filters between brick buildings and plastic blinds. They are so beautiful, their leaves and flowers illuminated in golden bars, I could cry thinking about leaving them behind when everything is said and done.

They’re only flowers and God only knows I have more of a black thumb than a green one. But I’ll miss them all the same – the orchids, from my mother; the hyacinths, from a time when I missed spring and colors; the bamboo, from the closest place nearby that felt most like home.

listen: Edward Elgar, Salut d’amour, Op. 12
read: Maggie Nelson, Excerpts from Bluets