Love and Life on a Birthday: A Thank You Note

I have never been given such beautiful flowers before- the sheer size, explosive colours and form reminds me of fireworks. My home was already quickly filling with the scent of the bouquet when I opened the note that contained two lines:

All things mellow in the mind
A slight of hand, a trick of time

I was confused. Where was Co-Primary going with this? I considered waiting until he woke up on his side of the world to ask. Luckily, patience is not my forte, and I can recognize a thread wanting to be followed. My love knows me, he knows me well; the bliss of discovery was part of his gift .

The first step led me to the following photograph by Duane Michal:

I will type the poem out for you:

All things mellow in the mind
A sleigt of hand, a trick of time
And even our great love will fade
Soon we’ll be strangers in the grave
That’s why this moment is so clear
I kiss your lips and we are here
So let’s hold tight and touch and feel
For this quick instant
We are real
– Duane Michals

Next step: Allow my breath to be taken away for the second time since opening the bountiful delivery that was teeming with sensory stroking full-bodied properties. I sat with the poem for awhile. The first reading was a love letter to me, the second reading was a testament of us. The third moved my body with the immaterial…he listened to me. My existentialist mid-life ramblings like a broken pitching machine facing a hot-headed ego- he allowed it to run its course knowing I may go back for another go. After I was gone, he collected my thoughts and pieces, handed it back with flowers, art, and words that spoke like a manual to decipher what I was feeling.

I do like research, so I kept going. The artist described the piece as a:

“traditional momento mori…which illustrated my awareness of being and not being. It is about youth, our illusion of permanence, and our unawareness of the moment of now, which is all there will ever be”. (Zaka & Suler, 2018)

My bouquet was transcending my initial interaction with it. Inserted into the oasis was concepts of impermanence, appreciation, deep beauty…the energy of the union and collaboration in every moment. He was sleeping across the waters, on the far end of another continent and yet he was and is with me.

Roaming further, I follow an aging Michals. He offers counsel to an aging me (and you).

”But that’s terribly exciting, letting go of all the old rules. What I took from surrealism was contradiction. Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” My advice to anybody, even to myself, is to contradict”. (Spitz, 2011)

Instinctively, I want to pour a glass of wine in memory of Michals, pull one of the flowers and offer it up to the artist, who entered my life as a birthday present.

Turns out, raising a glass in his memory would have been premature. I gave one final nudge. Based on his age when interviewed for the 2011 article, I assumed he had passed on; in fact, Michals is very much alive. Further revelation, He was not much older than I am now when he created “All things mellow in the mind”. Momento Mori, indeed…so easy to think that the sand may be emptying at this stage in life.

So the thread leads back to him, he who is asleep as I write this. His care, patience, and love made the previous 12 months among the most transformative of my life. Time may be said to heal all things, but time that is saturated with love is a conception; it resurrects, recreates, takes one to an internal home, releases a person beyond the limitations that have been horded with living a life.

Time washed with love encourages learning from yesterday, it savors the day, it arouses belief in tomorrow. THIS is the gift he gave me, he is just so powerfully beautiful that he wrapped it up in flowers, art, and poetry.

Works Cited

Spitz, J. (2011). Duane Michals is Wondering. ISO Magazine, (Spring), 8-9.

Zakia, R. D., & Suler, J. R. (2018). Perception and imaging: Photography–a way of seeing. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.