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Dangerous Compassions

favorite flowers

love

Hello, reader.  How are you doing?  What are you favorite flowers?  I met a lady at a cafe who said she’s crazy about flowers.

“You wouldn’t know it, looking at me,” she said.  “You’ll have to come back in the summer.”

She pushed up her sleeve to show me a big flower tattoo on her arm.  Yes, a commitment to her favorite flowers.  She explained she has some on her leg too.  She wants the swath of flower tattoos on her back also, connecting her leg and arm tattoos, but doesn’t have the money.

“Maybe you could make friends with tattoo artists,” I suggested.  “My only tattoo was kinda free.”

I wondered if the same could be said about me.  I mean that I’m crazy about flowers.  Definitely I have strong feelings about them.

wet

As I sat at the busy cafe, I started a list of my favorite flowers.  It’s changed lately, as I change.  You know I really live in Oregon now.  I’m a Pacific Northwester.  I’m no longer a desert animal.

Yeah, it’s wet here.  I learn more about plants and other organisms.  Feels exciting to change.  With more information, I become a new Strawberry Laura-Marie.

Here are my favorite flowers.  Felt good to be really honest about what most speaks to me.

  • naked ladies
  • loquat flowers
  • roses
  • pink magnolias
  • lotus
  • apple flowers
  • orange flowers
  • corpse flowers
  • Easter lily
  • sage flowers
  • saguaro flowers
  • chrysanthemum
  • passionfruit flowers
  • strawberry flowers
  • dudleya inflorescence
  • giant sunflower
  • random catkins
  • giant coreopsis like the ones on Anacapa island
questions for discussion

Do you really like fruit tree flowers also?

Are you into flowers that cannot be bought at a florist shop?

Do the colors of roses have a huge effect on you?  Like red roses vs white or yellow.  Do you feel their meanings strongly in your body?

How much does smell affect your love of a flower?

Do you feel sad, when you buy flowers and they start to wither?

Is it hard to decide when to compost them?

Is the difficulty of letting them go, outweighed by the joy of sharing your life with them, for the week they last?

marriage

When Ming and I got married almost ten years ago, peace walkers made us bouquets of desert wildflowers for the ceremony.  I remember the bright yellow–how it felt to hold the flowers in our hands and feel their blessing, as we crossed the line.

So yeah, another question would be–what flowers would you have in your wedding bouquet?  Would it depend on who you were marrying?

Oops–wrong video.

Who are those naive brown-haired young people?  I love them and remember them well.

time

I’m married to Ming, but I also feel married to time.  I’m married to my own past, unfortunately.  Maybe I should leave my past behind.  It’s feeling too much to carry.

If I got married to time–if we made it official, with a wedding–my bouquet could be kelp and other seaweeds, pickleweed, maybe some cala lilies.  Yes, because I sort of love cala lilies, and I sort of hate them–that’s how I feel about time.  It gives me a space to do things in, but it also fucks me up on the daily.

I am weird about time–what are you weird about, reader?  I’m feeling weird about gender, money, time, how the seasons change, my own identity, relationship, death, health.  Wow–I’m feeling weird about many of the important things.

I will be patient with myself and tell the truth, hoping I eventually feel better.  Blessings to you, reader, also.

By Laura-Marie

Good at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

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