Okay, okay, so maybe I’m spending too much time on a farm with animals, but as I gathered all of my equipment and headed out for my morning walk with the dogs, I had the sense that this assertive flower – goatlike in its intrusiveness – was talking to me.  I thought it yelled “yo” at me
  I admit to feeling a bit fearful this morning, as sometimes happens when I contemplate the enormity of the things ahead of me, my need to plow into my book, and the nearly impossible number of things I’m supposed to do, and to think about,  it isn’t even barely sunrise.
   So I had this dialogue with this flower, as I passed it, hopefully in my head alone.
  And it said, “yo, every day is a good day in theory, at least.”
  Sounds a bit sappy, I said, a bit Dr. Phil. I am sensitive to this, because my daughter Em is here, and she is a veritable sappy-warning system, sniffing it out like a bat looking for mosquitoes. She is the anti-sap, coming from Brooklyn, as she does. I want to be out of the house when she reads this. She and I had a great time watching the Yankees last night, and we are madly planning a weekend of Yankees-Red Sox baseball, in which the Yankees will return to their preeminent glory and end this pathetic Red Sox moment.
  And then the flower and I had this dialogue:

 Jon:  “Well, what do you think about fear?”
Flower: “Fear is a state of mind, a thing. Don’t listen to all those woo-woo people who tell you to be
up, and forget about fear. You can’t.”
 Jon: Are you saying give in to fear?
 Flower: “No, absolutely not. It’s just that for some people – you, maybe – it never goes away because you
want it to or are told to. In fact, it never goes away at all. You have to learn to live with it, to see it is not a real thing, even if you feel it.”
  Jon: As in understanding that it is a space, a feeling, and that you need to consider it, because sometimes
it alerts you to dangers that are real.”
  Flower: “Yes, but not to live in it, to let it live your life for you. You were right about you wrote the other
day, fear is a space, a ghostly mass that you must often cross to live your life, and to have a life. But if you think you can do yoga or just go to a therapist and talk yourself out of it, you will be disappointed, and mired,
I think.”
  Jon: So what you are saying  is that fear is a partner, almost an integral part of us, we wear it like a cap or watch, but when push comes to shove, we are in charge of it, and if we can’t make it go away, we can certainly move past it and ahead with our lives.
  Flower: “There you go.”
  Jon: I’m thinking fear is a choice, not a master.
  Flower: “Awesome.”
  Jon: And how to do you know this?
  Flower: “Well, what am I but a feeling, really. I am real, but I wasn’t here two weeks ago, and I won’t be here next week, and most of the time you wouldn’t even look at me, so I am just something to brighten up the place and inject a note of grace and beauty. Normally, we wouldn’t even have had this conversation. So good luck. I’m fading already. You have awhile to go. Make good use of the time. You learned that in your hospice visit yesterday. Perspective. Fear gets a slice, but not the pie.”
 
  I thanked the flower, and walked the dogs and took some neat photos. Despite that, I thought, this must be how it is to really lose your mind. Talk to a flower and write about it. Rose looked at me, and tilted her head, her what-is-this-lunatic doing now? expression. How, I wondered, did I come to be talking to a flower at  6 a.m., and perhaps anyone reading this would be well advised to read something saner.