Together Alone

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will
bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Anei ra maua

E piri tahi nei

E noha tahi nei

Ko maua anake

Kei runga a Rangi

Ko papa kei raro

E mau tonu nei

Kia mau tonu ra

Here we are together

in a very close embrace

being together

just us alone

Rangi the sky-father is above

the earth mother is below

our love for one another

is everlasting

- Crowded House: Together Alone

Today was Valentine’s Day. It was hard to miss.

All day at the shop where I work as a manager, Papyrus, I had customers buying treats for
comely lasses and lads of virtue true, virtue false, and virtue...mixed-grade.

They came by the hundreds, with their flowers, their chocolates, their platinum Visa swagger, their
‘my wife has a membership’ smile, and their sanitation department uniforms.

‘You have the most beautiful eyes,’ one ventured.

Esteban the Shopper (like a less antisocial ‘Dimitri the Lover?’)  turned up the thermostat:

“Your name,” he wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s… Rosel.”

Gasp! But… HOW...did you know…

“It is written on the back of your clipboard.”

HOW DID YOU KNOW ESTEBAN. YOU MUST BE PSYCHO.

There are a lot of flowers in classic literature but I have few stories of my own. It would seem I’ve never
been the sort of girl men give flowers to. The time I was unexpectedly but delightfully delivered a huge bunch at
work is the one that stands out. Or a bunch I once received from a gas station which were DOA when they arrived
at my home, revived briefly, then promptly expired within the hour.

My friend presented me with a galentine rose and card. “How many times have I been the one to
help the guys in my office get Valentine’s stuff for their girlfriends?”

From Mimi who sews poor withered flowers in La Boheme to make a crust, to the tragidienne playing Ophelia
or singing Violetta, the ‘Dame Aux Camelias’, to Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady at Tottenham Court,
who coincidentally I saw on Broadway last night (with Laura Benanti vamping like no-one’s business after
the poor blighter playing Col. Pickering fell off the raked stage and ricked his back; we got an extra song)
a woman’s way seems strewn with flowers. If she sold them, she was lowly - if presented them by a man,
she was held in high esteem. Flowers, it would seem, are replete with meaning, and their petals and folds
contain complex sociostratic symbolism: of masculine oppression, of war; of class and rank; fleeting
possession that a woman still somehow desires - they seem fated to retain their place in the public psyche.

The shade changes with age - from daisies to carnations, we grow or shrink in esteem with the passage of time.

Flowers ask for no recompense. They are presented at all sorts of occasions.They are prodded, cultivated, cross-bred,
quarantined, and iced. Roses evolved as a species to develop thorns, to keep hands from plucking them for
weddings, funerals, consolidation, condolence, bridge-building, commiseration and consolation.

Incidentally, I was recently presented with a beautiful bouquet of red roses, which then proceeded to turn around
and attack me with a most implacable thorn,, and I can’t say I blame them.

When a man is prompted to propose to a woman, the proper way to do so, convention says, is on bended knee,
with a bouquet in one hand and a ring in the other.

When the feelings that prompted that man’s actions run dry, as popular song tells, usually the delivery of cut
flowers to the arms of the beloved is the first reservoir to empty:

We keep flowers frozen, and dried, peeling to immortalise moments in our life that meant something to us.
To return to, in case it is never that good again.

In the now-classic Simpsons episode ‘The Way we Was’, Marge is asked by Homer to attend to school prom,
but attends instead with captain of the debate team Artie Ziff.

On the big night, ZIff is elected prom king. His acceptance speech reads as follows:

“Hello, classmates.

Instead of voting for some athletic hero or a pretty boy, you have elected me, your intellectual superior, as your king.
Good for you.”

Seemingly a pillar of the academic community and a bastion of small-town goodness with a side slice of apple pie,
it doesn’t take long after the prom king and queen’s first dance for things to take a Lynchian turn…

But who should appear as an unlikely knight in armor but Homer himself, by the side of the road, just in time to
repair Marge’s broken dress strap with a corsage.

I have never felt so homesick as I did these past few months. I’ve been working two jobs often until 10pm or later
(other friends frequently work 12 hour shifts without any breaks.) People are jaded trying to make it through, and it
can be dehumanising.

Last week, I got sick with tonsillitis for the first time in over ten years as the only sleet this season turned the streets
to slick ice. Even then the flower struggled through the concrete to reach the light, and sure enough the ice had
melted the next day.

Flowers also symbolise the fledgling American dreams of would be or soon-to-be American citizens.
Sometimes, these dreams wither on the vine.  Other times, people bloom where they are planted - or transplanted.
A woman today had a bouquet in one hand and a card with the statue of liberty in another. It was time.
Her friend was finally becoming a citizen.

Happy Valentine’s Day and God Bless Us. Every One.