The Garden of Fruition

 

fruition - noun - state of being actual, complete

Perhaps many of you out there are looking to find fruition somehow, searching for a sense of completeness. At the risk of sounding trite, the state of being actual may be close to being within your grasp. I'll give you a hint: perhaps the wholeness you have been desiring can be found where seeds meet soil and the vegetables and fruits of life grow abundantly. Yes, perhaps what you want can be found in a garden. 

I am a gardener; however, I am not a master gardener. I am a forever-inchoate landscaper who plays by ear, goes by intuition, and listens to those who have more experience with getting their hands soiled than I have. In April, I sold my house and my vast English garden on which I had labored for over twenty years, planting flowers, perennials but also annuals, annually. I got my tanned hands dirty, my crooked fingernails outlined with black, my Walmart sneakers and torn jeans muddy in the spring, summer, and fall. I didn't mind. It was all part of the plan: to work in collaboration with Nature to create beauty. According to my friends and relations, I succeeded and have the photographs to prove it. 

Strangely enough, I don't miss my miniature Versailles in Jersey, probably because I've replaced it with a vegetable garden, not mine per se, one that belongs to others, one that is kept alive by a community of us voluntary seedsmen who toil on arid land under the heat of the sun in order to help eliminate hunger and homelessness on a boulevard called Venice in a portion of L.A. with the same name. On Thursdays, I join a former stage actor who would rather work for a nonprofit than teach the children of movie stars just because she likes to be outdoors, watching and watering and waiting, producing good food and sharing it with us volunteers and the hapless few who live in their parked cars parallel to the garden. With downturned smiles, they watch us as we till, dig, hoe, pull, and plant. Their hands are as filthy as ours, but the mire does not come from gardening. Theirs originates from the grime of poverty and/or mental illness that takes opportunity and/or psychological/medical aid, not just soap and water, to wash it away. 

I can't save the world albeit I have been trying for about 45 years now. What I can do is plant one seed at a time and harvest what grows to fruition. It just makes me feel whole. Try it. You just may wind up feeling the same way.

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The Dating Scene: Los Angeles at Present versus New York in the Past

 

snooker - verb - trap, trick, entice (Google)

Dating in any city isn't easy, especially if you happen to be a woman 65 or older, and you haven't really dated for a long time. I am talking decades here. The last time I dated for an extended period of time was back in the early 1980s when I was a roommate on someone else's lease in Manhattan. Fifty (yes, fifty) years later, I am on my own lease in a luxury apartment in Los Angeles, dating men I am meeting online as opposed to organically (meaning in bars, clubs, and parties as I once did in New York).  What has changed? Well, not too much. 

To be fair, I will focus on what is an obvious difference: technology. Five decades ago, there were no smartphones, just landlines. Unless you had an answering service (which was costly), you had to be in the right place at the right time to receive a call, i.e. in your apartment. Or if you were hard to pin down, you had to depend on your roommate to imitate what is, at present, known as voicemail. If she wasn't all that responsible, she would forget to tell you who called. If she was, she'd write you a message and snooker you intentionally (or not) by sticking the minuscule note somewhere you'd never think to look, like on the side of refrigerator as opposed to the front. Ergo, it was rare that dates were arranged via the technology of the day. Well then, how were they planned? Usually at the location where the initial meeting took place or via unusual, creative circumstances. For example, I once enticed a date by posting my phone number in the window of my office skyscraper. I couldn't help but notice a very handsome salesman who had an office directly across the street on the same floor as mine. I waited until he looked directly over at me before I posted it in very large letters. He copied the number, called me, and we arranged a meeting. As I recall, we saw each other quite steadily for about six months before we broke it off, but not before I spent time with him at his Park Avenue apartment and his family's house in the Hamptons. Sweet. 

What remains the same? Men in general. Which makes perfect sense because human nature doesn't change over time, just technology. The sameness is particularly pronounced in both New York and L.A. At present as in the past, most urban men prefer not to commit to anything resembling a relationship if they can absolutely help it. What they deem to be perfect love is more or less what my mother (1917-1999) called "sex and sandwiches," casual sex and conversation sans much else. To be fair, most are willing to take you out to at least two dinners and spend a few bills as opposed to treating you to a roast beef on marble rye at Yummy's (L.A.) or Zabar's (N.Y.) before they make an attempt at seduction. Rather big of them, I'd say, or perhaps not, if you get my drift, ladies :). 

Okay, okay, I do seem a bit cynical as I am sure that there are citified women out there who are just like men in this respect. I can't help it if I keep meeting men like the aforementioned. This is a personal essay after all. Don't forget that I am limiting my critique to men in cities where trite expressions like "I'll be done in a New York minute" are coined for a reason. The urban populace tends to be impatient. Sexual satisfaction must come within the first three dates if you want to grasp anyone's loyal attention. You must have watched at least one episode of Sex and the City. Right? 

The bottom line is that I refuse to throw up the white flag of surrender. (In my city, no one would notice it anyway.) I figure by the time I am 75, most men of the same age in L.A. (where I reside) won't be as adept at sex as they once were, so they might have to rely solely on their sense of humor, talent, and/or intelligence to secure companionship. I think I can wait ten years as there is no safer sex than sincere affection in the way of hand holding and hugging :). No snookering will be necessary.

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