Read when you want flowers

Create your own love,

Every year I collect flowers. Fresh, I stick them into the NHL Winter Classic travel mug I took from the lost and found at my last job. After they die in the stagnant water, I thread my favorite stems in a piece of chicken wire I hang in the corner of my apartment. It's the end of the year and I love all of my flowers, but they're dead. It's time to move on.

How is the dried bouquet from the summer you keep on the shelf in your bedroom? How is the lush Monstera that's lost a few leaves from your pet lizard chewing on them? How is the artificial Christmas tree in the dining room -- will you take it down this year or keep it up as a memory for another 12 months? I love remembering with you.

Today I had a tough conversation with my favorite gardener. I asked him if he could imagine an oasis unlike anything either of us have built before -- something lush and unique that could be ours. He said that even though I was the only person he knew who still shared their fertilizer with him, he didn't have a good imagination. He could only recreate the gardens he'd grown up in or tended with other experts he'd known in the past, and he was beyond learning. He said that he's almost 40 years old and doesn't want to make something new with me. I agreed that it can be very tiring to build beautiful things with the people we love.

Almost two months ago now I lost control of my temper with the beautiful but useless weedpuller. His arms were too skinny; he never got them by the root. I fell on the ground next to him at the end of the night because I wanted to teach him how to be overcome by passion. "I love you," I told him. "I love you, too," the weedpuller said back, but he wasn't ready. He left me alone in my field of overgrown emotions, something fibrous still deep in the soil he touched.

I'm ready for the end of the year. Didn't you know? If you want new flowers, it will soon be the perfect time. We can go and get them for ourselves.

I've completed a new multimedia art piece. It's a tryptich using elements from my special friends: Seismograph paper, a walking tour map of the trees on the Washington State Capitol grounds, animals copied from a book about Yosemite and a collage of images from it. I took my time assembling the art piece, drawing the separate elements over the course of a few months. I'm learning now that I don't have to rush things, to trust the time it takes to grow and build with my dear friends, and to remember the cycles of nature that bring comfort and change to us all.

Mountain. Meadow. Lake. Bear. Moose. Birds. The waterfall. Tulips, lavender. Evergreen. I like having my art in the center of my living space. My friend visited and referred to it as my nest, which I never thought of before.

How do you build your space and make it your own? I'd love to see it -- what kinds of friends do you bring into your world and how do you share these important parts of yourself with them?

Soon it will be time to plant new seeds. What are you planning to bring into your life over the next 12 months? I'll be in my apartment making the little world I want to share with you when you have the time to visit. I'll be watching my new flowers grow or die, and remembering my old ones as fondly as ever.

I'm not leaving you alone,

Joe :P