I have to be honest I am not the biggest fan of sunflowers. I know, they are the quintessential American flower. The bloom and stalk are larger than life and takes up much of the sun like Americans often do. I think there might be a few reasons I don’t like sunflowers. For one thing, they were the heaviest of the flowers we sold at the Ferry Building farmer’s market located at the now defunct Port of San Francisco. The farmer’s market is often ranked in the top 10 open-air markets in the world. Tourists, tech billionaires, and weekly protestors are seen intermingling all waiting in long lines to get their hands on hand-crafted roasted coffee and breakfast sandwiches with fresh bacon. I worked on and off for one McGinnis Ranch, a staple farm of the market from Watsonville, CA. We sold a number of produce items and flowers. Everyone comes to McGinnis for their carrots. They are delightful carrots. Thin, crisp, and a hint of sweetness. The carrot creations San Francisco chefs would make are truly artistic. I am restraining myself right now to not write more about these carrots. We also sold flowers. There are many other flowers I would pick for my home before sunflowers. Sunflowers are not as diverse as dahlias and definitely not as vibrant as tulips. When tulips start to die in their vase, their blooms hang every which way and as they unfold, it is as if you are peering into a crystal ball and can see the future. Sunflowers are no crystal ball. The buckets of sunflower stalks took up space on the table and on the ground in our confined area at the market. There were would be buckets and buckets of sunflowers for tourists to ogle at and never buy (because they are too heavy to carry). Sunflowers are a party flower, a center piece flower, a “hey, look at me” flower. It is assertive and unashamed of themselves. That might be another reason I have not liked sunflowers; they are so sure of themselves. They are the white, straight venture capitalist man walking into a room with all the confidence in the world kind of flower. The sunflower is everything I have told myself I am not, except tall. I have stood out my entire life, whether I could help it or not, and most of my life I have just wanted to disappear into the corner, into the shade. I am much more like a flower who needs partly sunny, mostly shade, more like a Forget-Me-Not, or begonia, or Bleeding-Heart flower. We didn’t sell those at the market. The masses love sunflowers during summer time. They love their Americana, even in California. Maybe even more in California, desperately holding onto a “be sure to wear flowers in your hair” kind of past while carving out a “disruptive and innovative” future. You cannot wear a sunflower in your hair. I have tried. They still want their watermelon and sunflowers and red checkered picnic tables. The sunflower stalks are thick and furry like a 5-o’clock shadow on an aging man and hold lots of water. I always wondered how they grew so tall. Have you seen sunflowers standing tall in the field? I even get envious of their height. People always ask how tall I am and wonder how I became this height. Water, I guess.
While roaming the streets of Brooklyn on a June summer day, I told a friend that I had seen a group of sunflowers down the street. They weren’t the most stellar sunflowers I had ever seen, but they were there. There were about six of them all different heights, which means they were fighting each other for the little water that had come their way. No one was tending to them and this was not a hip community garden. I don’t think there had been an east coast summer torrential rain yet. They were kind of sad looking to the on-looker. I am pretty sure I was the only one looking at them. This friend did not believe me. “Sunflowers in Brooklyn? No way” my friend exclaimed. Throughout my life, it seems many people close to me have not been taken me seriously. I am without a doubt a very serious person with an intensity for life that most cannot keep up with, nor do they want to. Often, as the lone homosexual, we are expected to be the jester, to be light-hearted and to make others laugh. You might be thinking to yourself that you have that one gay friend and they are funny. Everything is not a joke, but I can find the humor in the darkest of humanity. I can tell you, there are sunflowers at a busy intersection in Brooklyn, New York with a short black metal fence surrounding dirt, brush, and weeds right outside the entrance to Olmstead’s Prospect Park. Last time I counted, there are six stalks. The sunflowers grow where Grand Army Plaza, Union Street and Plaza Street West all intersect. They grow in the shadows of the Soldiers and Sailors Archway monument dedicated to the Civil War unveiled in 1892. The sculpture was designed by Frederick MacMonnies and Philip Martiny. I just like MacMonnies last name, that’s all. He seems like he was a serious man, too, at least from his portraits. Who wasn’t serious in a 19th century photograph? We used to take our portraits seriously. They took time. I did not bother looking up Philip. I even think those sunflowers might benefit from the mist of the nearby Bailey fountain designed by Eugene Swartwout, which opened to grand fanfare and 100,000 citizens in 1897. Can you imagine 100,000 people coming out for the opening of an electrical fountain? As part of the fountain, the Greek god Nereus bends his body, gaps his mouth with spouting water behind his muscular greening cast-ironed body. That same year, 1897, the City of New York gave the the City of Brooklyn 37 acres for a Botanical Garden across the street from the Bailey fountain. We often forget Brooklyn was the fourth largest city in America before 1900.
About a mile from the Pacific Ocean, alongside a narrow state highway, there are about fifteen acres of farmland slanted with its gaze towards the ocean horizon. They call it McGinnis Ranch in Watsonville, CA near the infamous surf town of Santa Cruz. This is where the heavy sunflowers grow and originate. Among the sunflowers, the farmers grow carrots and strawberries, too. Have you ever tasted a strawberry picked from the field after warming in the sun? It might be the food of heavens. They melt in your mouth and satiate your taste buds as a symphony might enliven your entire capacity to hear. A warm strawberry from the field fills me. McGinnis Ranch was started by friend Sara’s grandfather. He was one of the first farmers that started the Ferry Building Farmer’s market in San Francisco. Now, San Francisco is known around the world for restaurant culture and its California produce. People travel from all over the world to taste these strawberries and carrots. These strawberries and carrots, nurtured by the sand of the Pacific and tended by generations of Californians, are good. I know they are. They probably the best in the world, honest, and have earned their rightful place on the plates of Michelin awarded restaurants.
In Kansas, outside Lawrence, not far from where I live now, there is a plot of land that grows sunflowers, too. This farm is not McGinnis ranch. It is not on a hill. It is not close to the Pacific Ocean or any body of water for that matter, much to my disappointment. Kansas has its own limitations. These sunflowers are the Instagram kind of sunflowers. Those who flock to this plot of land are fulfilling what it means to be Kansan, very much like those who go to farmer’s markets in San Francisco are fulfilling what it means to be in the City by the Bay. We are all trying our best to be our idea of American, even if it might mean creating an airbrushed version of ourselves. Families, friends, and wedding parties come to this field in peak season, July, August and September to capture the sunflowers. For those who may not know, the sunflower is part of the plant family Asteraceae. Astra from Latin and from Greek Astron meaning “star.” Do sunflowers look like stars? This is no Hubble telescope image of a dying star. Henry Draper took the first image of a star, the Orion Nebula, in 1880, seventeen years before the opening of the Bailey electric fountain in Brooklyn. The image has white circles close to each other with what I surmise stardust surrounding them. It took 51 minutes to produce. I do not see a sunflower. I feel like I am giving myself the Rorschach Test. With the horizon line and the state flower behind the farm’s visitors in Kansas, they take iPhone pictures in their Sunday best. Often the bridesmaids and the bride in white are there in the field. The supportive ladies are wearing sunshine yellow dresses because the sunflower is the bride’s favorite flower. It is the state flower no less. Their whiteness is much like the white silence I grew up with, faded into the background very much like that first photograph of a star. Honey, that is not your color.
I recently visited the new US Olympic and Paralympic museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado and I was texting my friend images of different objects because we are both huge Olympic fans. In a year of delayed Olympics and controversies galore, I found solace in the objects of the past. I had an Olympic dream like many and has faded as the years go by. We still have our Olympic memories. I walked the halls of the museum obviously wondering what it would have been like to be an Olympic champion. They had a representation of every Olympic medal ever given out. I streamed down the ramp staring at the different commemorations of the host city, cultural markers, and variations of gold, silver, and bronze depending on the local material with which they created the medals. I sent him a picture of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games medals because he is from the south and my family attended the Games when I was a 10-year-old boy. We often talked about the 1996 event as it was part of our childhood memories shaping our adulthood including the domestic terrorist’s bombing in the first week, Keri Strug’s epic vault, Michael Johnson’s golden Nike shoes, and Amy Van Dyken’s infamous spit. Our queer banter of Olympic trivia knows no bounds. I remember every Olympic champion stepping up to the podium in their US Olympic track suits, first receiving their medals with the forest green and shimmering golden ribbon dawning their neck. Then a volunteer would come by and hand them a bouquet of flowers before their respective National anthem would play. And there they were, sunflowers prominently displayed in every bouquet. This was the American bouquet. The sunflowers represented me.
Flowers are no longer given at the Olympic Games for “sustainability” reasons.
I went beyond the gates inside the Brooklyn Botanical gardens in Prospect Park. I was roaming the gardens, learning about bonsai technique, drinking a frozen Rose, and enjoying a hot concrete jungle city summer day. That same friend who did not believe that there were sunflowers in Brooklyn was guiding me through his favorite places in the gardens. We decided to venture deep into the 37 acres, the exact same acreage since 1897, following the same footprints of Brooklyn citizens of the past who enjoyed a leisurely walk on a summer day. As we approached the deep back corner mimicking the midwestern plains section meant to represent farmland of the United States, per didactics for garden goers. There, among the controlled midst of watering systems, highly landscaped gardens, and manicured pathways, were sunflowers. This time, they were majestic and very much unexpected for me. It was the same feeling I had when I first saw Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of two sunflowers lying on their side at the Met. Much like Van Gogh’s painting, these sunflowers in the garden were sensuous, vulnerable, and glistening with their petals curving inward. Painted in 1887, the painting highlights the yellow center, with light yellow petals and hints of green and yellow-ish stalks. They are partners of each other. I saw this painting on the same day I saw my resilient patch out in the busy intersection in Brooklyn. And maybe in the gardens, all my resentment of sunflowers was washed away when I ran through the sprinkler like I was a kid again and the element of surprise caught me off guard. That moment opened a second chance for me and the sunflowers. I was more like a sunflower than I had ever thought. Deep down, I thought to myself I can stand tall, grow my 5 o’clock shadow, reach for the sun and unfurl my petals when I am ready. I had never shown my friend the other resilient sunflowers in that dusty patch not far away from where we were that afternoon. It never mattered that he believed me. Because, here they were, the sunflowers of Brooklyn.
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