Worn Me Down

"You can't always get what you want."
- The Rolling Stones

It's true, I suppose. Like right now, I'd really really love to have an orange. I can almost taste its juicy little self. Peeling away the rind, smelling the citris as it wafts through the air. But I've come to realize that just beca -

Wait. Scratch that. I absolutely can get an orange. I have to walk around the corner to the store, so I suppose sitting here in my room I can't just magically produce one. But on the great continum of needs and wants, orange is high up on the attainable side.

So while I'm not calling Mick Jagger a liar, I think maybe he just needs a little perspective. Indeed, it would be much harder for me if I wanted say, a monkey. A monkey is much less easy to come by than an orange, you can't just get them at the corner store. So much so that I might be tempted to say I just can't have one. But you know what? That's a cop out too. If I wanted and dreamed for that monkey I bet I could save up enough money and find a pet store that would willingly sell me a one so that I could carry out the rest of my life as a simian-laden paradise. Just look at Sigfried and Roy.

So really there are very few things you can never have. Anton Chekov maybe, cause he's dead. But for the most part, yes. You can get very close to most of the things you desire. You just can't always have them right away. Some things, generally the most important ones, take time and effort. It's a barter between how bad you want something and how much work you have to put into it to get the end result. So when does the effort required to aquire something stop being worth the payoff that thing brings? How does one negotiate working things out and knowing when to let go? At what point is enough, enough?

Take my house plant Fiona. And yes I do name my house plants.

Fiona is a Calilily. Fiona didn't come from a store, she was bequethed to me from the previous tenants of my last apartment. When I got her it was spring and she had these huge white flowers that I loved to look at. I moved Fiona and I into my bedroom and put her on top of my bookcase, a place of great respect for me. I left the shades open for her to bask in the sun, I watered her what seemed to me to be the requisite amount. Sometimes she'd get a little droopy but a glass of water and voila she was back to normal. How great, I thought, a plant that I can respond to. Fiona and I had a good system going.

Until about a month later her flowers started turning brown around the edges. I didn't know what to do. I put plant food in the pot, I tried putting more water in, but there's only so much water that the soil would hold before it started spilling out the bottom dish. I made several very very large messes and Fiona being on my bookcase meant I made messes of things I really didn't want to get messed up.

So I moved her. I figured for both our sake it was the best plan. I put her in the kitchen where she'd get more direct light and not spill her contents onto my collection of drama theory. To no avail. The flowers eventually withered and fell off. I told myself maybe that was just what Calililies did, it was heading into summer, maybe it's a spring flowering plant. In the back of my head I sort of knew that wasn't the case but it was too late to save the flowers anyway. My friends all gave me advice and told me what to do about her. I'm sure it was well intentioned but none of it worked. Some of the advice I couldn't take, I couldn't give her direct eastern sunlight because the apartment's windows faced north west. Some of the advice seemed an inordinate amount of effort, spending money on fancy plant food when the rest of my plants grew just fine seemed dumb. And some part of me didn't understand why I couldn't just get Fiona to grow on my own. Clearly she had been fine with the previous owner, I didn't see what I was doing so terribly wrong.

Fiona took a beating when I moved into my new apartment. All of the plants did, but she ended up stuck behind some boxes I was slow to unpack. When I pulled her out from the rubble I thought for sure I had killed her once and for all. And while I was sad to see her all brown and dead I was also a little relieved. But to appease my conscience I watered her again and put her out in the sun and sure enough in a few days, though now minus most of her former foliage, Fiona seemed resurrected.

We've sort of struck a deal, Fiona and I. I try as hard as possible to water her at the same time I water the other plants. It makes it easier to remember. She still gets droopy which makes her kind of ugly so when I see that sometimes I get up and go water her more. Sometimes it works sometimes not. I like the window open, she doesn't seem to and since there's no where else she fits in my new room, I alternate open and closed on cold days.

And at this point it really doesn't matter whether it's Fiona's fault or mine for the destructive person-plant dynamic. No matter what I do I still seem to forget to water her a lot. I think I've been doing a good job and then I look over and all of the sudden it's withered plant city. I'm not going to directly say she does it on purpose, but you know... Calililies have that way about them. I don't mean to be negligent, as a general idea I like Fiona, but I still can't help it. Maybe if she grew the white flowers again I be more apt to notice her. But I have a feeling that's dependent on me giving water more regularly. You see the problem cycle. So I'm stuck here with a wilty house plant.

I return to my original set of questions. Maybe you can't know for sure when enough is enough. Despite the fact that everyone around will have 12 opinions on the matter when it comes down to it you can only fight for what you want in the way you know how. Don't fret your decisions too much, even if they're important ones, cause eventually you just have to let go and make one. As troublesome as Fiona is to my psyche once in a while, I don't really have to worry too much, at the end of the day she's just a house plant.

And now to go get that orange.