just to be alive, just a’one more day

Today’s post is about immortality, of a sort.

When my mother was a teenager she dug up a clump of the little blue wildflowers that grew on nearby Bucky’s Hill and transplanted them at the edge on my grandparents’ yard.

My mother is gone, a victim of an untied shoelace and the balance-inhibiting affects of port wine. Bucky’s Hill is gone, a victim of real estate developers who bulldozed the land flat and filled in the neighboring peat bog in order to drop down a rather prison-like condo complex on the site.

The little blue flowers in my grandmother’s yard have thrived and spread over the past four decades. From mid to late April, the side of the yard by the driveway becomes a cerulean carpet of tiny blossoms, a memorial far more suitable for my mother than any inscription on a slab of cold granite could ever be.

When my wife and I moved into the new house in 2004, I brought some of the plants with me, as a sentimental gesture in honor of my mom. I tried planting them in several locations around the yard, but with no success. I assumed that the soil up here on the hill just wasn’t suitable for that type of plant, and gave up trying after the fourth or fifth round of failures.

Yesterday, my wife and I were out on the patio surveying the storm damage and how our perennials were faring in the cold, wet weather, and my wife called for me to check out something in the bed where the lilies and bleeding hearts are planted. It was a solitary little blue flower, peeping up through the mud and the husks of last year’s annuals. I certainly didn’t plant it there, yet there it was – a random wonder in a random universe.

electric eels – Cards and Fleurs (from God Says Fuck You, 1992) – A swell bit of Cleveland proto-punk that begins like a fever dream and ends like a punch in the nose.

Los Abandoned – Como la Flor (from the Los Abandoned EP, 2004) – My wife has a cluster of friends in LA who keep her abreast of the local pop and punk scenes, and occasionally send her CD’s of bands she might enjoy, which is where I first came across Los Abandoned’s excellent brand of bilingual punk pop.

Here’s the video for their equally outstanding “Van Nuys Es Very Nice”:



100 Flowers – 100 Flowers (from 100 Years of Pulchritude, 1990) – Originally LA punk pranksters The Urinals, following a Maoist-inspired name change and a switch to an art punk sound reminiscent of Wire, The Fall, and/or The Minutemen.