Molly's Roses

When we lived in our previous house down in Venice the woman who lived behind us went a bit batty and one day snapped all the heads of my roses as she walked by as my recompense for talking out side during the day in my lanai on my cell phone. I think she must have had her hearing aid turned way too loud, for she lived quite a distance across a pond and I am not all that loud. Nonetheless it made her mad and in a fit of pique she shuffled over in her walker and beheaded my roses, just like the unhappy Queen in Alice in Wonderland. It apparently took the stuffing right out of her and not to long after she was packed off to a “residential treatment facility”, (what as kids we called the looney bin). One thing is clear is that the roses’ beauty was not to be tolerated in her increasingly ugly world, any more than my happy prattling to friends, family & co-workers. Molly Schmid’s roses, laid so casually with their ribbon are like my happy conversations on the lanai…without consciousness and seeming eternal, certainly fresh and happy. When the ugly demons possessed my neighbor’s brain, they would have none of either, snapping off any head daring to smile out of its fox hole. When I look at Molly’s roses I find them quite enchanting and the buds, as they unfold very charming. I think of my neighbor, wonder if she is still alive, hoping, if she is, that her tolerance for grace & beauty has returned. Molly’s Roses are on the wall at www.Mgalleryoffineart.com.