2 April 2020. Flowerland.
A longtime neighborhood treasure, Flowerland--the old Albany nursery----you become aware of just how valuable these places are only over time. But that's true with many things. Possibility of their loss makes them sweeter still.
I like it best by night, of course--the dangling incandescent lights, strung on old-style wires, impromptu fencing this way and that, profusion of growing things--layers and layers--especially in front, along the street--where a winding concrete sidewalk skirts the inside of several giant eucalyptus. Intended to be uneven, this-way-and-that. Layers and layers.
Seventy years, they say. Established right after the war.--just like me. My parents would speak of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on April 12, 1945--four days after Tony was born. I grew up in a family that revered him. and how not? FDR had us all in mind--says a lot--an administration predicated on this... Alicia, in our talk here last month--what was it people felt then, together? And why?
Flowerland--they've kept the old sign, the letters in themselves speak of a history. That touch of art deco, a post-war continuity. And just below, the panel of movie theater marquee. A signboard with moveable letters. Someone changes the messages regularly--or at least often enough that you always seem to notice a new one. A certain wry thoughtfulness. Makes you try to imagine who it is that comes upon with them--these horticultural haiku. Her age, in particular. Does she climb up on a ladder at some early hour when no ones about--never a hint. Gray hair, well-combed--like Aunt Lita, no doubt--my mother's closest friend back in San Diego, when they were both single mothers, working for the schools in the late 1920's.. Lolita's people were English sectarians--freethinkers--they founded the town of Leucadia--another garden. Gave all the streets names from the Greek myths... Orpheus, Vulcan, Hermes... Lolita, whose outrage at the schools' segregated bathrooms--white / colored--led her to a life of political commitment. Things can change, They must.
Instacart workers today--blue-collar, in effect, like the Amazon employees. Why should their economic need expose them to greater risk. As Peter (my dear brother) once put it in a song, Where Is Love?
Could have been on the hoarding at Flowerland, yes.
YOU ARE THE GARDEN...
_____
Note: My existential gaucho-Cantinflas pose, and the Tlingit hand...
Peter's song, Where is Love? was recorded by Junior Marvin and the Wailers Band, on their 1994 album, Jah Message...
