Garden State of Mind

Before this night, nobody had ever given me a present wrapped in aluminum foil. It was Christmas Eve. 2008. My home was filled with food, flowers, and family. Bowls of pozole scattered the table among poinsettias. I remember a gentle knock on my front-door. My older brother went over to check who it was; he looked at me with one raised eyebrow and a tone dripping with a brotherly disdain and said, “It’s for you.”

Behind the door was one of my good friends. His face lit up with the yellow from my porch light and the pink on his nose seemed so soft compared to the rainbow sparkle of the tiny bulbs that hung behind him. I watched his cold breath float in the air when he greeted me. We only chatted briefly, and then he awkwardly handed me a gift.

“Open it after I leave,” he said. 

So that’s what I did. After he left, I shut the door, and peeled back thin layers of shiny silver. It made me laugh. The foil was a weird move, but what I found beneath it brought me a smile. It was a DVD I didn’t own yet of one of my favorite films: Garden State.

I wasn’t surprised. He loved that movie as much as I did. But I was confused because there was zero plastic packaging around the case. My confusion faded when I popped it open and two things fell to the floor:

A folded up handwritten letter and a small daisy.

***

A few days ago, I was in the middle of a cleaning and organizing spree. It is a thing I tend to do during times of transition, or when I have a lot mingling in my body and mind; it helps me process.

Outside my window, everything looked full-gloom with gray and that post-Christmas calm sprinkled across all the streets. It didn’t help my mood. I had a pile of sentimental stuff, hoping to purge what I no longer need. I dreamed and journaled about it. Let go, make space. I could feel lighter, I think. Pictures, letters, whatever. They stay shoved somewhere in my closet. 

But I suppose it is sometimes hard to let go of things that once made you happy and now hurt your heart the most. And I suppose, I am sometimes an emotional masochist.

Because lately, I’ve found myself trying to piece together things that maybe can’t be pieced back together. It’s hard when it feels like nobody else wants to try to piece them back together too. It’s hard to feel constantly homesick. 

But I keep trying because there are only a few things in this life worth saving and trying to bring back, if they even can be saved and brought back, and so, I am trying. Exhausted, defeated, hurting, but trying. 

And thinking back to last December, I remember I spent a lot of last winter trying to keep myself numb and feeling a mixture of attachment and detachment. So what a relief it is to be feeling and trying again. 

While tossing out some stuff, I decided I wanted a movie to keep me company. I had been meaning to revisit Garden State. It had been years since I last watched it and it felt right with the drizzle outside. I grabbed my TV and DVD player out of the closet and plugged them into an outlet. Then I went through my stack of movies and found it right under a VHS of Pretty in Pink and another of Reservoir Dogs. When I opened the case, I found a familiar letter and flower.

Of course, I thought back to when my friend gifted that movie to me. And I was reminded of what a simple and special thing it is to share a love for something like that with someone, especially a friend. It kinda feels like having a piece to the puzzle of a person. That’s part of why art is important, I think. 

When your own language fails you, you can point to something tangible someone else made and share it with others and see if it resonates; it is as if to say to them: “Some part of my essence exists in this, do you see it?” Or, “My pain is harbored here, in this song, can you hear it?” Or, “My insides feel like this today, do you feel that too?” Or, “This is me, do you understand?”

What I’m saying is that the world is a lot less isolating when someone gives you a full-body “Yes.” Because it means they understand. And what I’m saying is that it’s important to feel even a little understood. And what I’m saying is that it’s a duty to let people know when you understand them because otherwise, they might never know they are understood. And what I’m mostly saying is that my friend from back then really understood and that was him letting me know. And I knew it then and I know it now.

***

There is much to be said about the film Garden State. Where it shines, and where it doesn’t, how it has aged, and its movie soundtrack impact. I’m less interested in all of this right now. Revisiting the movie, I was mostly interested in the scene where Zach Braff’s character, Andrew, says the following:

“It just sort of happens one day, and it’s gone. And you feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t exist…maybe that’s all family really is…a group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”

At some point, he tells Natalie Portman’s character, Sam, that she feels like home, but really, what he’s done through the course of the movie, is come back home to himself; after years of being numb from Lithium, he ditches his meds and slowly begins to feel everything again, especially everything that hurts. He’s alive in his own skin. He opens up and lets the world in again. He’s returned home.

I looked at the bottom of my friend’s letter and the “P.S.” reminded me that he technically didn’t give me the daisy. I gave it to him first. He was returning it back to me.

***

This morning, with the dead daisy in my palm, I brushed its soft center. I’ve been thinking a lot about how there are some daisies that close their petals at night and then open them back up in the morning; like their own floral forgetting and remembering. They close themselves, constricting in the drippings of darkness until they remember who they are, remember the sun, and then remember to bloom back up, stay open, and let all the light trickle into them. 

I admire the small flower. Not solely for its tenderness; nature is a gentle thing, yes, but you should never overlook the way it is naturally aggressive in its commitment to its own aliveness. Night then morning. Again and again. The daisy remembers and returns home; home to both itself and the world. I like to think there is less homesickness when you remember you can always return home to yourself. 

And I feel we must always remember to return home to ourselves.

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Hi friend,

Thank you for coming back again and again and reading. My first post of 2023 was January 1st, so it feels right to send this on the final day of the year.

I’m closing out this last one with a quote I shared in that first post:

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

— Mary Oliver

If anything resonated, feel free to leave a comment, click that tiny heart, reply to the email. Share your thoughts and feelings, or just say “hi.”

It truly does make my day.

Until next time.

Stay Tender,

Sandra