“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” —Sigmund Freud
The image above is one of the many variations I had on the ledge of my Home at the Alexandria Hotel. I place I loved for it's history and hated for it's sheer lack of anything good for those who called it home except we were not sleeping on the streets. I will say this about these sad yet amazing little gardens. They saved me a few times. For one it made the idea of one jumping out the window all the more difficult.
The issue with this garden ledge garden was the lighting in that armpit of the building maybe got 1-2 hours of direct light a day and the rest of the time it was in shade. And me I wanted to force my will and have flowers and blooms and magic in that little 4 foot by 1 foot space to have fields and meadows! I did manage to get humming birds up 8 stories hidden inside a cove in the building up above the stinking and sprawling streets of Downtown Los Angeles' skid row.
I went through some of my darkest times in this magical dump of a hotel. It was a dying magical place ruined by addiction and poverty and developers who did not give a shit about people only profit.
I had many drunken and drug fueled night and got sober (8 plus years and counting) in that hotel. And I spent hours, days perhaps a weeks tending to and killing and trying again in that little field of flowers up on the 8th floor ledge to have something beautiful to look at. Something to dabble with and work on when I thought for sure I was going to lose the battle and jump. I sat at that window and thought often of ending. I lay on the old chase lunge and read of Punk Rock and Pirate adventures next to that garden.
I didn't realize it at the time but that ledge was much more important than I ever gave it credit.
It was not the first Hotel or ledge garden I had and in the end I ended up giving up on it because I kept trying to force things that would not thrive in those shaded and trying conditions. I got sick of picking the crap out of it from the discarded trash others above discarded out the windows. Yeah that is a fact. Hair from hair brushes, various bits of paper, candy wrappers cigarette butts, a dirty diaper from the lazy bitch tow floors above. (that is another story for another time). Life got busy or other issues dealing with that damn Hotel, once so grand.
So gardens are important to me. And have been even when I had to carve out a space 4 feet by 1one foot. A series of tried attempts and lots of failures but magic all of them.
( Note to those getting this in emails: you are getting this fresh from the fingertips prior to any fixes and additions to the texts. why because I feel it is important to get the raw thoughts out there quickly. If interested in the next few days I will fix what needs it or I find annoying to me. This may change and I will clean it all up prior to sending it out but as I publish it I have to make that choice then so here it is raw.)