ikebana, or the flowers that stand alone
the morning i found out grandpa ray died, i was waiting for bus 101 to take me to negishi station on my way to tokyo. my uncle updated his facebook status with the news. i didn’t expect to cry but cry i did, river from my eyes not to be dammed. the bus arrived and as i sat down and looked around i realized i boarded a bus that was reserved for old ladies, and that most of these old ladies that sat in their reserved seats had bouquets of flowers resting in their laps. it was as if there existed an unspoken japanese rule that i naively bumped into that on sundays, in the morning, when you ride the bus, make sure you feel like a funeral. there was sun, there was earth, there was me. a bus, flowers, and lipstick. mom, her mom, her sister as mom. grandpa ray wasn’t really my grandpa. i packed one thing that came from his home—a stuffed red dog, older than him i think. i think ray welcomed death. i think he was sad to be alone after grandma margaret (who wasn’t really my grandma) died.
once in tokyo i found a grocery bag of flowers abandoned in front of an apartment building. that’s the third time in tokyo that i’ve come across abandoned goods, maybe fourth, all but one were bags of flowers (the exception was an umbrella). i can only imagine the drama that introduced the desertion—maybe they came from an unwanted partner, maybe they were dropped in a scrambled dash, maybe the flowers were supposed to take the form of an apology that wasn’t accepted. no matter the case, the arrangement of the fallen flowers stretched across the concrete with a broken elegance that led pedestrians to tip-toe around them, caring not to disturb the damaged goods that seemed an offering (with accidental grace) to the spirits of the dead. beneath our roads are sprouting trees, beneath our feet are bees that deliver pollen to our mailbox, behind our eyes there are rocks rushing towards us with outstretched hands. in the meantime, i am learning how to balance; i am learning how to be gracious.
