In roughly 24 hours I will be embarking on a 2,500+ mile road trip from the Tampa Bay to Southern California. After seven years in St. Petersburg, FL, I’m officially making Downtown Los Angeles my new permanent address. I come to you live from the sprawl of boxes and bags in my room, where I’ve carved out a little time to write between packing, re-packing, and begging the LA Department of Power for electricity in my forthcoming apartment.
Maddee and I have opted to forego a moving truck or POD and instead ram my Nissan Rogue to the gills with shit in order to save a few thousand bucks. A wise (and frugal) choice it may be, this has left me in an awkward moving purgatory. Everything we bring eats up precious cargo space in my vehicle. The possessions that I sacrifice will be left to fester in my parents’ house, or worse, awaken one morning at the end of their driveway, facing down a garbage truck in the hot Florida sun.
Some possessions are easier to say goodbye to than others. My impulse quarantine book purchases, like The American Association of Patriots’ How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety, can be left atop the toilet tank for bathroom reading. The Ben Simmons jersey I bought in 2020 will gather dust in my closet after he requested a trade out of Philadelphia in 2021.
But there are other, more crucial possessions that I find impossible to depart without. Not just the novels that made me, or the journals I’ve completed, or the scratched copy of Red Dead Redemption II for PS4 that I’ve committed countless fictional crimes through.
There are also living possessions, companions of sorts, whose oxygen I depend on to live.
Yes, I’m talking about my houseplants.
This is a problem that generations of vagabond green thumbs have experienced. I have seven houseplants and only a small car to fit them in.
How could I deny my pothos plants, whose robust vines reach far and wide?
What kind of idiot would reject the ambitions of my money tree, which, I can only assume, will bless me with riches proportionate to the height I’ve allowed it to reach?
And how about my other plant, whose species I can’t remember, and who adds nothing to my life? I like him too!
My seven plants are like Voldemort’s seven horcruxes. To leave one behind would permanently and irreparably destroy part of my very soul.
But, if I had to choose, I’d sacrifice Alfredo.
Alfredo is a bromeliad. I got him from Ikea in the spring of 2019, during my senior year at Eckerd. His burgundy flower bloomed between piled manuscripts, empty beer cans, and burnt coffees. He brightened my days of stress as I struggled to stay positive while finishing my senior thesis on humor in literature. After graduation, he found a home with me in my parents’ house, but, like me, was subject to post-grad burnout.
His flower died three months later. Then, during quarantine, his leaves began shriveling. While the world returned to normal post-2020, Alfredo continued to decline. His once green and luscious arms are now brown and cracked.
Evidently, I learned online, bromeliads only have a lifespan of two to five years.
The eggheads at HGTV confirmed my fears. Alfredo is dying.
While I knew my time with Alfredo was coming to an end, I didn’t want to say goodbye. I continued to water him alongside his six plant-brothers, Luigi, Danny Kaye Jr., Ollie, Gunther, Otis, and Shithead. (Yes, I name all my plants.)
While the others grew, Fredo continued to wilt.
Like Philadelphia wide receiver Alshon Jeffery in the 2018 Divisional Round, this comeback had slipped right out of my hands.
With my road trip creeping up on me with every word I type, I have made the difficult decision to mercy kill Alfredo.
Even if he survived the brutal 36 hour ride through the swamps and deserts to Los Angeles, I’m certain that Alfredo will simply die in our new apartment as soon as we arrive.
I stopped watering him last week. While Luigi, Danny Kaye Jr., Ollie, Gunther, Otis, and Shithead get their afternoon tap water today, Alfredo will look on with death in his eyes.
His soil will soon dry out completely and his final green leaf will darken.
If I have time this afternoon, I will de-pot him on our dock and set him off into the Madeira Beach bay in a funeral service to rival that of any head of state’s.
“Taps” will play on my phone. There might even be a 21-gun salute but with beer cans.
And then, at dawn, we will ride off to California with lighter loads, but heavier hearts, and only six of my houseplants in the back of my car.
Miscellanea…
In advance of our travels, I picked up Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. It details his real-life cross-country road trip with his poodle, Charley.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the book, but the first chapter provided a superb traveling quote, which I’ll be taking with me on my journey:
“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from.”
Also, of Charley, the poodle:
“He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.”
My only wish in this life is to one day write about anything as powerfully as John Steinbeck writes about a poodle.
Shouts out to…
Maddee, for the new Elephant Graveyard logo, which I’ve peppered across this installation of the newsletter. If you can’t tell, it’s an elephant sinking into a tar pit while its trunk holds onto a cigarette. This was commissioned to Maddee after we visited the La Brea tar pits, whose dead elephants subconsciously inspired the 🐘🪦 monicker.