sunflowers notme i'll never let myself forget popeye cigarettes and sunflowers 040627 ... crOwl why? 040627 ... notme why not? 040627 ... notme why why? 040627 ... notme why why not? 040627 ... . fragments of memory my grandma's garden 041206 ... . i remember the sunflowers, looking at them their amazingness i seem them in dreams still dreams when i'm being bitten swarmed by mosquitoes, a memory i remember the sunflowers, and then the water the mosquitoes 041206 ... . and my cousins it must have been summer we smoked popeye cigarettes was my arm in a cast yet or still? 041206 ... . i remember the sunflowers 041206 ... silentbob His affinity towards sunflowers goes beyond that day he spent with her running through hills covered with them outside small iowa towns. He loved them before, but his association was forever changed when they were together, taking pictures between the tall, splendiforous plants. She moved to Germany and sent him postcards with sunflowers on them, and she never sent the same one twice. The next time he will see her, it will be cold, and all the sunflowers will be dead, but when she comes back for good, they will be waiting. And so will he. 041207 ... tender square when michael and i moved into this house, the previous owners left behind a solitary glass mug in the dishwasher. the mug is stout, wider than a typical 8 oz coffee cup, and the clear glass has a ringed decal of four large sunflowers. it’s become my go-to mug if it isn’t dirty. the biscotti tint of my morning tea compliments the yellow petals, the spotted coronas of each flower. i’ve always been drawn to sunflowers; i marvel at how such a small seed can grow to such staggering heights, love how each stem will swivel its face to meet the angles of the sun, soaking in its heat. i tried to germinate some of my own sunflowers earlier this summer, even though i’ve never grown anything from a seed packet in my life. i had hoped to plant them in front of the house in a patch of soil that gets overrun with pipenta mint and faces east. the tiny plastic greenhouse showed signs of promise—at least four seeds of the dozen planted were sprouting beneath the pellucid lid. the instructions said to move the soil pods outdoors once the tray could no longer support their burgeoning, but the robins ate what i had tended within a few hours and the rest of the seeds were duds. later, i bought another pack of sunflower seeds from the grocery store, this time of the mammoth variety, but never ended up planting them because i’d already missed the window for their blooming. those seeds will be duds too, surely, but i keep the pack as a reminder of the intention. there’s always next year. 210907 ... unhinged i was on the fence about van gogh and then i saw his sunflowers 210907 ... tender square ah sun-flower by william blake (1794) ah, Sun-flower! weary of time, who countest the steps of the sun, seeking after that sweet golden clime where the traveller’s journey is done; where the Youth pined away with desire, and the pale Virgin shrouded in snow, arise from their graves and aspire, where my Sun-flower wishes to go. 210928 what's it to you? who go blather from