Entry 86

Irises inside and out

My grandparent’s neighbor’s kids came to see my uncle’s dog. They got permission from their parents. I had her on a leash, so they thought she was mine, and the middle-sized and most talkative one was saying “she’s so cuuuute, she’s so cute!!” and telling me about their two dogs, and the hermit crab they had for two weeks that just - died - like that, her two sisters nodding emphatically behind her. “You know it’s really sad,” she says looking up at me, her overlarge eyes filling with an adolescent pensiveness, like she’s remembering a recent realization, “that pets just will die, and stuff. It’s sad.” “It is, yeah,” I say to her, my own two sisters nodding behind me, probably. “It is sad.”

One of my aunts is shivering even though it’s not cold. My other aunt is handing out bananada. My sister keeps taking photos. My grandpa is wearing green. The peonies are fuschia. There are irises in every color. The sun is setting over the garden; the fruit trees and raspberry bushes are already in the shade. This time of year you can smell sweet grass everytime you open a window, or step outside. We’re all thinking similar thoughts, I can see them on everybody’s faces. A kind of fullness, completeness is here around us in the fading daylight and with it, an incurable sense of loss.

My parent’s kitchen is full of cut irises, and they smell so strong, they fill all the rooms, even the ones they’re not in. “I feel bad for cutting so many,” my mom says. “I’m glad you did,” I tell her, because I can still smell them now, and scent memories last the longest, I think.

Back in LA the air is hard to see through. Downtown appears to be on fire, tents on the side of the highway. I’m listening to Some Misunderstanding on repeat for the third day in a row. I’m thinking about integrity and how it might not get you anywhere in the world but it can keep darkness out of your eyes; about compassion and good humor and wry wit; about the idea of comebacks and redemption. I’m thinking about the ways you can tell when people are truly sad, and what the reasons say about who they really are. I’m thinking about all the different people each of us appear to be, depending who’s watching, depending who sees.