Failing Upward

Chapter 1 (part 1): Tabula Rasa

Shock works that way. A person runs on automatic. I read that once. Like an old movie projection camera rolling in slow motion. Click, click, click. The film sticks. Celluloid melts. My fate--part of the mangled frames. I never believed in fate until now.

"Jonathan, you make your fate," my father used to say.

Tabula rasa. Blank slate. Clean slate. Or Fate? Was it easier to blame Fate? Or easier yet to blame myself? Some say there is no fate. Like my friend Sherlock. He says we make what we are. He believes in Tabula rasa.

I recall some of what happened before, but like celluloid shredded in that projector's wheel beyond repair I wonder--who I am, really?

That day it all began started uneventful. I opened the flower shop at 8 a.m. by flipping the "We're Open" sign in the front window. A quiet end of the work week, and the neatly written delivery orders for the day all organized--waiting for me to pull out from today's delivery box.

Saturday.

Deliver to, deliver when and deliver what.

All written in black or blue ink.

I'm a flower designer. At least that's what I am for now. I'm other things too. My dad said "bigger things." I'm working my way through medical school, but I've always loved working in this flower shop. Years ago, when I decided to take the job at the greenhouse, the regulars at local bar my dad frequented teased me with cliché homosexual barbs: "Hey, gay boy, wanna twist my tulip?" To my father, it was no joke. Hell, he asked me, "What are you goddamned some fag? Only pansies play with the flowers all day," and "do you have to wear that smock after work, too?" Instead he tossed away my day job, and said I was "working my way through college."

I saw it another way altogether.

This job ordered my life. I felt calm and centered arranging flowers. Little stress except on Valentine's and Mother's Day. Unlike that of a doctor where life and death are in your hands, I don't have the world on my metaphorical shoulder here. And even though I'm only pre-med, I still worry about all that responsibility. For the most part, clientele in the floral industry are thoughtful and kind. After all, aren't they thinking of others when they say it with flowers? I loved that about this job. I don't make much. But my second job helps me pay the rent and college too. Let those who believe that only gay men work in flower shops be damned. Besides, every floral designer wears a smock--it's practical.

It's beauty. It's nature. It's trying to improve on beauty and nature. There are days I wonder, will this woman receiving this centerpiece think I've improved on the simple beauty or will she think it's a travesty? Is it silly to even try to improve on what God made?

Why stop there? How silly was it to even try to change my father's mind? He ignored this aspect of my life.

Then there are other days. The days I'd think about quitting both med school and the flower design business. Embrace what I really love: Playing guitar in a band. That, according to my dad, isn't respectable employment either. He wanted his son, "the doctor." He was right though. You can't make a respectable living at playing the guitar unless you're really, really lucky. Yes, talent is important, but it's luck for the most part. At least it's enough to help with cost of med school. I love it though. While the world is filled with talented washed up old musicians, I'm not that old yet, but yeah, some of the guys in the band are. They've dreamed that same old dream of fame, that same dangling golden carrot that keeps people chasing it. But Bart's Place, the local dive, or what ever fucked up place our recent manager has us play, wouldn't pay the rent. Live entertainment seems preferable to dead floral recipients or bodies on a slab, or jumping on stage more exciting than waiting on family members of the dearly departed, I can't build a future on nights playing on stage with the band.