A Purple Mood

Introducing the Floral Self Portrait Series: "Rooted: A Year in NYC"

Starting in September 2022, I began a year-long floral self-portrait series to document my first year in New York. This is the September entry, “A Purple Mood.”

The air was thick and sticky. Sunlight streamed between the leaves of trees, whose shade provided no relief from the oppressive August heat. Dad took my picture next to Fitz, my stick-shift car. I had spent the last year learning how to drive it on Alabama’s unexpectedly hilly terrain.

We hugged goodbye. James shook my hand. They got in the car. “Bye,” I said. My voice was small. I was trying hard not to cry. I hate crying. They pulled away, and I watched them grow smaller in the distance, before letting the tears drip down my face.

The lump in the throat is usually swallowed, the only pill I’ll ever eagerly gulp down. But this time, I couldn’t help it. Trudging back up to my third-floor Brooklyn walk-up, I sat amidst half-opened boxes and general clutter, crying my eyes out. 

The move to NYC was number four in four years. I have a masochistic tendency for moving to places where I know no one.  Aside from the emotional strain of no community, there’s a practical one, too. Who do you ask to help carry up loads of furniture and belongings? Who do you ask for doctor recommendations, or the nearest grocery store?

Many things are searchable on the internet, I know, but when there are a million things you need to do and you’re the only one doing them, it’s nice to have a familiar face to lean on. And at that moment, I had no one. 

After some minutes sitting in my pity-party, I rubbed my eyes, took a breath, and stood up. I’m still learning to appreciate the healthy aspects of crying, but the reality was that if I wanted this mess of a living room to disappear, it would be my hand. It was best to get moving. 

Slowly, the days crawled by, and then weeks. My cousin’s ex-girlfriend came to help me build furniture so I could stop sleeping on the floor. A roommate arrived, and her dad drove us to Target so we could get real shower curtains and cleaning supplies. And toilet paper. It’s all the little details that escape you because they are so banal, but once missing you realize, also crucial. 

The other roommates trickled in, one by one. We slowly began to settle in, and I began to prepare for my three-week vision trip to Paris. Yes. Right as I arrived in New York, I was taking a vision trip to France to see if I could envision myself living there.

Just before I left, one roommate and I decided to venture to the flower market on 28th street. Perusing the plants, I couldn’t help but notice that between the transition to fall, bursts of yellow were spewing forth as sunflowers, ranunculus, and a few other blooms. They were hanging onto summer. They were hanging on to hope. 

Yellow has become my new favorite color in recent years because it’s happy and adventurous. I knew I had to make something with the flowers I had found, because they represented everything I was wishing for in this new page of my life: Adventure (which always seems to find me anyway) and happiness, wherever I can forage for it through life’s brokenness. 

Fast forward a few weeks, and I was wandering through the quiet, cobbled, and ancient streets of Arles, a small southern town on the Rhône. The air was chilly in the biting way that announces winter’s imminent arrival. The light was delicious, a true testament to why it was loved by the Impressionists. Though I have a special place in my heart for Paris, the vision trip was all about Provence, the land of light. A photographer I admire rediscovered herself here. As the days rolled on, I wondered if I would find myself here, too.

To my own amazement and shock, the answer was…no. Spending a week in Provence, alone, made me realize that what I craved most of all was roots. And I wanted those roots in the concrete jungle of New York City. The thought of starting all over in France felt overwhelming. Daunting. I wasn’t approaching the project with the exuberant optimism of a first-time visitor. I was looking at France through the lens of hard experience—however glorious it was. And I couldn’t find it in me to do it all over again, and so soon.

In this series of portraits, I wanted to convey hope and beginnings but I also wanted to convey endings. Dreams end, and my dream of France, while not dead, needed to fade into winter, dormant. I hope and know that in the coming years it will resurrect and bloom. I’m just not sure how it will manifest itself.