The Ballad of the Blooming Yin-Yang

A journey into failure and non-existence

My grandpa Marble used the metaphor of the onion in a lot of contexts, but like a good metaphor, it connects to everything. You can peel an onion and take away layers without missing them, until eventually, you don’t have an onion anymore. At a certain point, you have to stop and be pleased with what you have.

++ 

Marigolds were our stake in the ground. They were our national anthem and we paraded in our national colors like every day was May Day. Marigolds were the only flower we had at our wedding. Marigolds were for dessert. Jesse held a bouquet of marigolds. I had a baby marigold pinned to my lapel. Marigolds were in our yard. It would have been a sin against our marriage to walk by a can of marigolds and not bring some home. We named our daughter Martha Marigold Marble. We believed in their sturdiness. We believed in their smell and their magic.

Months after Jesse passed away I was dreaming about her. Not really of her. She wasn’t in front of me. I had had those dreams where she and I were together. Sometimes she had come back from the dead and the moment felt like jubilation and eureka, like, I don’t know why we didn’t try you just not being dead anymore sooner. Other times she was dying in front of me again, in fresh pain, and I was saying goodbye with new tears that were warmer and wetter than I remember in real life. But this particular dream felt like I was with her in spirit and her spirit had something to show me. 

Exactly like the Native American guide in Wayne’s World 2, she took me to a desert of endless sand dunes. Ahead of us, springing from the hot, white sand was a massive perfectly circular yin-yang made out of yellow and orange marigolds. The green stalks were tall and the leaves were full. The blooms all looked like their own miniature suns joining together into this dichotomous, graphic shape, like the way a galaxy looks like a solid object when you look at it from far enough away. 

Jesse loved yin-yangs. She was a pilgrim for balance. And like all pilgrims, she had a very human struggle to find what she valued and desired most throughout her life. And so the yin-yang was like her north star. A reminder that easy come easy go. That balance might be a constant act of letting go of what you cannot control. For every ebb, there’s a flow.  

This dream took place in the fall of 2021, about half a year after Jesse had died, and I remember immediately wanting to turn what I saw in that desert into a photograph. But at that point in time I was doing everything I could simply to keep my feet planted on planet Earth. I had just restarted a career that had been paused for nearly two years and was now a single dad to a two-year-old. But, the vision stuck with me through the fall and through all of 2022, like a friend that I had sushi with every couple weeks to catch each other up on our lives and what we had been working on, who we had been seeing, what we were hoping to do. My good friend The Vision. I was amazed at the loyalty of The Vision. It never flaked on me or made me feel guilty for not acting on the hopes we had for each other. The Vision stayed the same every time we met and every time our lunch was over we’d say the same thing.

“We should take this photo.” 

“We will, we will.” 

“No, but really, we should.”

“It would be so fun.”

I could smell the flowers. I could feel the sand. I could bask in the afternoon sunlight.

In 2023 I was feeling more in my body. More enough in my body. At least enough in my body to want to try and do things again outside of the most basic obligations expected of me. And when I caught up again with The Vision, we got out a calendar in earnest and said let’s get serious about this, and let’s really do it. 

I remember The Vision looking at me, and I remember it saying, “It’s time.”  

It was March 2023. 

My studio manager Lindsey and I started to lay the plans.

At literally that exact moment, things started to go wrong. 

The Marigolds were the first to go. The florist we hired to design and construct our yin-yang told us they weren’t in season and we weren’t going to be able to find a giant yin-yang’s worth of marigolds anywhere. Which, in hindsight, was probably not a great sign. In fact, in double hindsight, waiting for those flowers to be in the season would’ve been a very reasonable thing to do. But, if you remember, we had laid plans, and when you commit to a project, you sometimes have to accept that everything is a compromise. It’s a march to the end, and in the end, everything will be different than you expected, but you’ll never be able to imagine it any other way and that’s just the process. It’s a journey and it works, and the creative process has been proven successful for basically billions of years, and who was I to say this photo absolutely lived and died on marigolds? 

The next thing to go wrong was the financial reality of having a budget. Which is a baked-in problem of every shoot in a way that it’s not an issue in dreams and visions. Flowers aren’t cheap, and to make 20’ yin-yang of two flowers limited my options significantly. But we made our flower choice because it would be good enough. I didn’t love the flowers. But they were flowers, and they were pretty, and we were marching, and when you’re marching, you don’t stop until there’s no more marching to be done. 

The Vision, my loyal friend whom I had stayed in such great contact with for over a year, shared all those sushi lunches with, and who never wavered in their optimism and belief in our dream, was a very patient collaborator because I was not only compromising, but I also took liberties. Because as the photographer, I do reserve the right to take liberty because, at the end of the day, it’s my name that’s attached to the photo, not The Vision. I felt like what the photo needed as a cast. Like, a small cast. Two older men. In my mind, these two older men, probably dressed in robes or kimonos, or something that made them look incongruous in a scene that was already incongruous, would give the image a sense of immediacy. So, Lindsey and I cast two older men. If I closed my eyes, I could see them filling the composition reaching out for each other, me close to the one in the foreground on a wide-angle lens, and blocking them so their faces weren’t visible so there was a nice mysterious anonymity to them. It wasn’t part of The Vision, but it became part of the photo and it felt dynamic. 

There’s a handful of dunes around Los Angeles that would work for The Vision. There are dunes out in Death Valley on the Mojave, there’s one near Palm Springs, and there’s one in Pismo up on the central coast. Energetically, I didn’t love doing this shoot somewhere called Death Valley. I’d also shot in Death Valley a long time ago and I associate it with 2 things I didn’t love: 1. Getting a phone call from my crying mom telling me that my very special aunt was about to die, and 2. A cashier at a gas station looking me in the eye and saying, “Do you know what we call it out there? We call it The Devil’s Asshole.” 

Jesse and I had shot in the Pismo Dunes together in 2019 and that whole day no one made mention of any assholes owned by the devils, and I didn’t get any phone calls about people I love dying. Sometimes when you’re shooting you look for whatever home-field advantage you can find for the sake of taking that much of an edge off the challenge. In this case, shooting in a place where I’d already taken fun photos with Jesse to take a photo that Jesse had pressed into my brain felt like the right move.

The Florist packed a van from top to bottom, front to back full of flowers, and even filled a Toyota Corolla with flowers. The flower team left LA at 9 am. Lindsey, one of the old men, and I left shortly after and headed north to Pismo. The drive was one of those drives where you feel like your heartbeat is the size of the car because everything around you is so beautiful. The hills broke the color green into a million pieces and were replaced with a new green. Instead of mile markers, there should’ve been tombstones that read, “Here lies where the color green once was. It was murdered by a superior color that now reigns. Green is no more. Now only Ultra Green lives.”

We land in Pismo and picked up sandwiches for all at Jersey Mike’s. Easy stop. Love sandwiches. On the walk back to the car, a pickup truck that was the opposite size of a small penis nearly backed into me and my car at full speed. Lindsey, whom I’ve mentioned earlier and offered no real description of, but is truly one of the most serene people on earth, which is highly important in regards to what’s to come, said, “Did he do that on purpose?” 

“Yeah, weird vibe.” 

According to the internet, there are two ways to access the Pismo Dunes. There’s the public route where you pay the park service at a toll booth right at the beach, and then you’re invited to drive along the ocean and into the dunes. Or, there’s an RV Park that butts right up against the dunes with open access. When Jesse and I shot here, we used the RV Park, and it had been in my mind that would be our plan again. We rendezvoused with Flower Team where the North American continent ended and the Pacific Ocean started and caravanned to the RV Park. The plan, which as we approached the park I was beginning to realize was very half-baked, was to arrive at the RV Park, introduce ourselves, ask if we could unload our gargantuan amount of flowers on their property, and then park off their property and hike back into the dunes. This is what my memory told me we did last time, and last time was smooth. 

Life used to be smooth like that. 

If today were going to be smooth, it would go like this: We enter, introduce ourselves, eat delicious Jersey Mike’s sandwiches, and by 1 we start loading flowers to the dunes and set up a 20x20’ yin-yang in a spot that communicates vastness. By 3 we’re in the perfect afternoon light, and we’re taking the photo. The older men are moving gracefully in their robes, and the whole team is feeling a sense of group accomplishment and even the cells inside their bodies are thinking, “We’re making great life choices.” Fellow dune visitors are looking over and feeling lucky to be part of it, even if from a distance, sensing the dedication and passion and are completely taken by The Vision. By 5 we’ve wrapped and we’re Yelping dinner spots in Pismo, carrying flowers from the dunes to the car, everyone wanting to look at the back of the camera again to see the image just one more time, just to assure their minds that yes, it exists. By 8:00 we’re on the 101 South. We’re in bed by 11:00, with tired bodies, eager to sleep in peace and await transmissions from other realities for new Visions. 

Right now it’s noon so we’re right on time as we approach the RV office. I pull over and hop out and am greeted by the man running the place who has most of his teeth and a demeanor so calm you wonder if he’s ever had an opinion in his whole life. But I could feel his soul raising its right eyebrow at me, which is a superpower I gained being raised in a rural, conservative part of the world. I can sniff out existential disgust instantly and in particular when it’s directed at me. And I can understand. Here I am, a city slicker with no RV to speak of, rolling into his park with a caravan of arty types with vehicles stuffed to the gills with blooming flowers. But, I’m truly thrilled to be here, so I let him know how beautiful his park is, and ask him if it would be alright if we unpacked our cars in his park before our afternoon in the dunes. 

He was the type of guy who repeated everything back to you before commenting. Eventually, he said, “Oh, sure. That sounds fine.” 

“And would it be OK if we had a little picnic here in your park beforehand?” 

This produced a bigger sigh than I was expecting, which I wasn’t thrilled about, but he said, “I suppose that’s alright.” And he pointed to some picnic tables not too far off from where we were standing.  

I got back into my car with the intention of doing a quick lap through the park, identifying where the entrance was, wrapping my head around how the unloading would go, and then come back to the picnic table the old man had just gestured toward where I would devour my incredible Jersey Mike’s sandwich that I definitely hadn’t stopped thinking about since I bought it and was almost killed by that big truck. I led the caravan forward, looped around, and spotted the entrance. Then, right as I was about to turn around, I saw a couple of picnic tables in a vacant RV spot no more than twenty-five yards away from the entrance to the dunes. 

In my mind, I thought, well, that’s extremely convenient. So, we parked our three cars in this one RV sloop with the picnic tables and annihilated the Jersey Mike’s sandwiches. I have the ability to lose myself in food, and the world becomes a calm, still, sanctuary and the universe slows its expansion and the buzzing of all the atoms reconfigure into a morphine drip of dopamine, and I feel a momentary sense of inner peace. I disappeared into the void of mayonnaise and vinegar and cold cuts and grasping for napkins. I ate until my fingers were clean and the trance was broken. Right as I was clapping my hands together to get everyone to work, I saw one of the scariest things you can see in this lifetime: A golf cart approaching rapidly. 

Driving the golf cart was a man in a blue polo shirt that brought to mind the ocean. His skin had never met sunscreen, and he had a horseshoe mustache that looked like it was made up entirely of expensive paintbrushes. If there wasn’t literal froth foaming from his mouth, the metaphorical froth was infinite. He approached in a way that brought to mind violence. He approached in a way that let us know this was his personal January 6th. This was Bob and Bob was absolutely furious we were in his RV Park. 

Lindsey, the most serene human on our team if not ever, intercepted Bob. Lindsey’s from rural Texas, where I’m assuming all the boys she ever met had Bob for a dad or an uncle. At the minimum, Lindsey was fluent in Bob and could defuse his fury like one of those kids on YouTube who do Rubik’s cubes behind their backs. The facts were we had permission to be here from the old guy, and Lindsey was going to melt Bob’s heart with her unflappable pleasantness and explain the misunderstanding. I watched from a distance, waiting for Bob’s body language to change. Waiting for that moment where he went, “Oh, I understand now.” 

But the problem was Bob had his mind made up on the approach. Bob initiated the moment raging at 50 on a scale to 10. Bob hated us. And Bob was, I couldn’t believe, phone to his ear, calling the cops. There’s a certain energy that the Bobs of the world have when they’re on the phone with the police. They’re talking with the operator cop, but they’re actually talking to everyone in their physical vicinity. I started walking back to the group and Bob started walking to me. “You’re trespassing, mother fucker.” 

You just have to remember what you know and what’s dug you out of situations with Bobs in the past, which is to let them know they’re not wrong, but kindly, there’s more information worth sharing. “Sir, I don’t think you need to be so aggressive and yell at my friends. The old man over there gave us permission to use the access to the dunes. We’re just unloading—”

“You’re not unloading, you’re on private property!”

“I think there’s a misunderstanding because the old man—” 

He started yelling a description of me to the cops. 

“Alright, we’re packing up. We’re out of here.” 

I think he told me I wasn’t out of here, which was obvious because I was using future tense, but Bob was beyond the physics of grammar. This round went to Bob, and our caravan scooted out of RV sloop. For peace of mind, though, I just absolutely needed to check in with the old man to get his pulse on Bob. For all I knew, maybe Bob was just a local psychopath and not an employee of the park at all. Sort of like a stray dog that a small town collectively takes care of and affectionally refers to as “The Mayor.” 

“Hey, so, we were just kicked out of here by a really angry man named Bob on a golf cart who called the cops on us for trespassing.”

The old man was concerned, almost exasperated, but in the most calm, unnerving way imaginable. “Oh, but you weren’t trespassing. I told you you could be here.”

“I mean, you and I know that! That’s what I was trying to tell him!”

“Well, he shouldn’t have kicked you out.”

“This is what I was trying to say—”

With the grace of a hungover cowboy on an untamed stallion, Bob skidded his golf cart right at our feet. His face remained in its naturally frothy state, and Bob yelled at the Old Man. “Get this guy out of here! He’s trespassing!” 

“Well, now, Bob, I told him they could unloa—”

Bob could care less about the Old Man. It was clear Bob had spent most of recent history turning the Old Man into his doormat, and The Old Man’s eyes widened as Bob laid further in: 

“They weren’t unloading! They were eating lunch in slot 148!”

The look of relief on the Old Man’s face was like a mother seeing a child she thought she’d never see again when he realized he wasn’t going to have to stand up to Bob. He quickly looked at me. “I didn’t say you could have lunch here.”

“No, I asked you if we could have a picnic. And you said yes.”

“I said you could have a picnic at those tables.” He pointed to the tables he had in fact pointed to earlier. I could see how this was going. The Old Man had absolutely zero interest in parsing through the absurdity of which picnic tables with Bob. Bob had dictated and the Old Man was thrilled to seek refuge in this picnic loophole. My only option was to accept defeat and leave the RV park with my mind spinning. 

Bob hated us. It was eye-opening because I can’t recall ever experiencing irrational, blind hate before. It was outside reason. It was outside anything I could grab onto. It wasn’t a misunderstanding that could just get cleared up. He hated our existence and wanted us to stop existing. At the very least existing right in front of him. 

Plan A was foiled, so Plan B got set into motion: Head to the beach. 

The silver lining of getting Bobbed was our team had lived through a confusing and maddeningly dumb trauma together, and now we felt like a Team. You can live your whole life and never find a better motivation or rallying cry than, “Fuck that guy.” With the RV park in the rearview, and the expansive Pacific ahead of us, possibilities felt not just near but galvanized. Art was to be had. 

To paint a picture: Imagine you’re driving into a state park, and there’s a paved one-way road with a tollbooth and a smiling ranger who’s there to take your money and point you confidently in the direction you’re heading. Right ahead of you is land and trees and rocks and, importantly, more road. Now, imagine all of the first half of that right up to the ranger. Then remove everything in the second part of the description, starting with pointing you confidently in the direction you’re heading. Ahead of us was no road, but an immediate dip onto the beach, and from there, you can go left or right or take your chances driving to Japan. When I asked the Ranger for the easiest way to the dunes he pointed to my left, but when he spoke, it was like from his mouth was a vortex of where words lost their meanings and only the idea of sounds rang. I kept asking for clarity on the easiest way to get to the dunes, and his responses kept amounting to you are already at the dunes, the dunes are already with you, and you are the dunes, and you always have been the dunes but in general, they’re that way and we only accept cash. Which I luckily had. Lindsey, me, and one of the older cast members, who’d somehow managed to be asleep in the backseat nearly the entire day so far, pressed forward with the van and Corolla behind us.

The Pismo Beach Sand Dunes and Recreation Area is the only stretch of beach in the state of California where you can drive directly onto the beach. No more than 30 yards into Plan B, the van and the Corolla were stuck in the sand. Cartoon stuck where the tires spin comically and the car sinks into the earth like a casket at a funeral. We’re still basically within talking distance of the ranger who’s got his hands on his hips watching us like there’s nothing he could’ve said to us ten seconds ago to prevent this. I’m trying to get something besides sand under the van’s tires while Lindsey goes over to the ranger to see what can be done. The other awake older cast member meanwhile clearly lives for situations like this and has sprung to life and is with me rocking the car back and forth, giving instructions to all of us like he’s personally helped a hundred cars out of this exact situation in his lifetime. Lindsey, steadfast in her serenity, shuffles back to us with good news.

Enter the Jerk Pirates. 

The Jerk Pirates are a tandem of guys in a massively jacked-up pickup truck with large pirate flags flying from the bed and their only objective in life is to free people from being stuck in the sand. They don’t require payment. All they want is for people to enjoy their lives, free and mobile. The Jerks circle the van and squawk car words back and forth, on their knees, on their backs, standing up, hands on their hips, dodging eye contact with non-Jerks. They hook the van up to their truck. Boom. Free van. They hook the Corolla up. Boom. Free compact car. As they set us on our way, they remind us if we should ever need them again, they won’t be far. They’re not Jerks. They’re not Pirates. They’re heroes. They’re angels. 

We make the life experience-informed decision to leave the Corolla in the parking lot. But, a decision had to be made if we should roll the dice again with the van, as it carries everything that’s important to this shoot but is clearly not built for the peril ahead of it. The decision to bring the van back onto the sand was an inflection point that highlighted how much the day had already lost the narrative. The Vision was on the back burner’s back burner. My blood was circulating nothing but stress throughout my body, and none of the stress was even remotely related to the fact that we were here to take photos of flowers in the shape of a yin-yang surrounded by sand as far as the eye can see. Now closing in on the exact time we were hoping to be getting ready to take the first picture, we were facing an existential moment of doubt. But sand be damned: We had a Vision to create. The van had to press forward.  

Slowly leading the way, we made it to the damp, compact sand near the shore, turned south, and took control of our day again. We could see the dunes. The sun was shining. The Pacific was sparkling to our right. The sleeping older cast member remained asleep. The cortisol in my veins was intoxicating. Bob couldn’t hurt us here. We were behind schedule, but we were resolved, determined, a team. There was art to be made and having to earn it gave the whole day a sheen of cinema. We were good vanquishing an ambush of evil. 

And yet, somehow, someway, out of the blue, the beach was interrupted by a river. Again, something the ranger could have easily mentioned. And yet, here I was, again halted, hopping out of my car, onto the sand, looking out ahead of me at a river probably 30-40 yards across and a truck tire deep. 200 yards past the river were the dunes, rolling on and on. I could see exactly where I wanted to take our photo. Exactly where the Vision could come to life. And yet, the fast feeling of the day sinking away bloomed in my chest as the river rushed the California rainwater into the ocean. 

A sheriff, armed to the absolute teeth like he was also traumatized by Bob and expected him to appear at any minute, stood by watching the mini-parade of gigantic lifted 4x4 trucks ford the river like they were cosplaying a modern-day Oregon Trail reenactment. Warily and with great reluctance, having already had the cops called on me just an hour before, I approached the tactically adorned sheriff and asked if he thought I could get across the river in my SUV. 

“You could try,” was all he said without even looking in my direction, just like a dick. I nodded. Not helpful. I asked him what’s the deal with the river and he told me, still not looking in my direction, that it was from all the rain this winter.  

Lindsey and I huddled to figure out what could possibly be our next move. As the sheriff had suggested, I could try to make it through the river but the way the day had been going, it felt like the odds weren’t insignificant that something would go surreally wrong. Even watching these monster trucks make their way through, you could see steam rising from their hoods where the brackish waters splashed against the hot metal of their engines. Trying would be a roll of the dice in a game I had never played and didn’t know the rules of. Certainly, the van could not make it. Realistically, if we wanted to get to those dunes, it seemed like the move would be to load my truck up many times and ford the river many times and just hope that each time went perfectly. 

“Or, we could hire the Jerk Pirates to take us,” Lindsey suggested in a moment of clarity. The Kings of Pismo. It was so obvious. How could we have even stood here at the banks of this river, thinking we, city slickers, were equipped for this moment, to drive through the ocean? The simplicity of calling the Jerk Pirates highlighted the absurdity of the previous moments’ thought processings and the pendulum swung back toward possibility. 

Lindsey pulled her phone out and her fingers graced it’s glass with the focus of a figure skater who fell during the qualifying round but was now making an unprecedented run for the gold medal. Words were uttered that I only understood like a newborn understands its mother: I was safe, The Vision was secure. Everything would be OK. 

In fact, we could see the Jerk Pirates from across the river. They were making a descent from the dunes and headed for us. Their truck moved down the sand like a goat across rocks. The sun reflected off the sand, the sun reflected off the river, the sun reflected off everything. Everything was in a state of reverie. We opened the van, ready to start transferring the flowers into the Jerk Pirates truck bed when I heard an “Oh, no.” 

It was Lindsey. She saw it happen. They had slipped, and they weren’t moving. Their truck at an impossible angle stuck in the sand. And then her phone rang. Our recon needed recon and we probably weren’t going to see them on our side of the river anytime soon. 

My therapist has told me I have hypervigilance built deeply into my brain, which lets me handle stressful situations like a duck swimming across water. On the surface of the water, you see a serene animal gently making its way across the pond, but under the water, you see a storm of movement and action that betrays all the perceived grace.  The first thing that comes to my mind is I’ve never had a photoshoot fail in my life. I’ve never set out to take photos only to come up completely empty-handed. I’ve had photos I’ve shot that I don’t like and don’t promote. But never just a massive swing and a whiff. My ego wasn’t having it. I felt a deep repulsion to this idea and overrode the worry. Today wasn’t going to be a first and we were going to find a way to take these photos. The first steps were to leave this dumb beach, river, ultra-vibey sheriff, and our poor marooned Jerk Pirates.

“Okay, let’s turn around.” 

I remembered seeing on the map that there were other dunes about 30-45 minutes down the coast in a different park called Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve. I had never been there, but all I needed was sand as far as you could see, and if Guadalupe could deliver that to me, I’d take it. We get off the beach, activated the caravan, and were on our way. 

The drive south was peaceful to a fault. Every five minutes Lindsey and I alternate between bringing up Bob and the river. I can’t believe Bob. I can’t believe I was about to drive through a river. I can’t believe that we should be wrapping our shoot at this exact moment, feeling the thrill of completing an ambitious, strange idea. Everyone high-fiving each other. Everyone yelling affirmations. Everyone saying, “Wait! Let’s get a group photo!” And everyone carrying flowers back to our cars, and then someone lights up and shouts from their phone, “I found a taco place!” I hope they have margaritas! “Margaritas!” Everyone would be yelling, wondering if we’d be lucky enough to find a place where they’re served like slushies. Sure, on the rocks would be fine. And someone would make a point to get theirs with mezcal. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone would have gotten a Paloma.  

Instead, we were driving to an unknown place, bleeding a trail of hope behind us. The sky was an in-between blue and overcast. The clouds were so low you could see through them, but so thick you couldn’t say it was sunny. We drove through a small town that reminded me of something you’d find between Houston and Austin, which reminded me of Jesse because she’s the only reason I know what between Houston and Austin looks like. 

After her second reoccurrence of lymphoma, our doctor in LA told us that we were out of treatment options in all of California. All we could do was pack our suitcases and family and uproot ourselves and get to MD Anderson in Houston as fast as possible to get on one of their clinical trials that Jesse might still qualify for. We were in Houston for four months, three clinical trials, and one Blue Bonnet season. The trials were a rollercoaster of brutality. Sometimes it seemed like they were working exactly like the miracle we were hoping for, but just as quickly the positive effects faded, leaving only behind a devastating toll on her body. But never on her spirit. And when we didn’t have to be in the hospital, and when she wasn’t feeling destroyed by the medicine, she wanted to live like she always had. Namely, she wanted me to take her to the Blue Bonnets. 

I was suddenly driving on two highways at once. One on the central coast of California, one in east Texas. One car had Lindsey and a sleeping old man in the backseat. The other car had Jesse and a sleeping two-year-old in the back. In east Texas, we were listening to DMX because he had just died that weekend. On the central coast, the music didn’t remind me of death. In east Texas, I pulled over because I had to pee, and when Jesse got out I looked over at her, and the whole backside of her dress was covered in fresh blood. One of her Nephrostomy bags (which had been there for only weeks at this point after her tumor had squished her ureters closed, almost killing her on an Ash Wednesday) had somehow come unattached. Because she had next to no platelets (the cells that clot bleeding) in her bloodstream at this point, we had to white knuckle it back to Houston out of terror she may bleed out next to me.

On the central coast, I pulled over because the road was washed out. It’s wild how you can go so long in your life never facing a washed-out road, and then just like that it happens twice in less than an hour. The rains, again. The Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve wasn’t happening and it was feeling like realistically the whole day was washed out, too.

Still, other dunes could be an option. The flowers would stay fresh another night, and Lindsey seemingly telepathically confirms everyone’s available tomorrow. We could try it from the top first thing the in AM. But, the new plan glitches out when we open the weather app to see the predicted rain and wind storms in the Mojave desert that stretched all the way to Palm Springs. Everything was rainy. The rain had taken control. The app itself started raining washing out calendars like roads. We were sinking. The Vision wasn’t going to come to life. At least not today. Or tomorrow. Or in this plane of existence. We decided we’d call it a day and the caravan three-point turned and started heading back toward the 101 South freeway just in time for a desperate, stupid idea to lightning bolt its way to my brain.

“Lindsey, can you get the RV Park on the horn, please?”

My thought process went: What if I called the RV Park, reserved a slip, and just gave them my money? Once they take my money, who are they to still hate us? Once they take my money, we’re even. Sure, they told us earlier that they wanted to send us to jail. But, now they’re just hearing a polite voice on the other side of the line with no external body expressing signifiers for them to be revolted by. I heard an old woman’s voice pick up and asked if there was any chance I could rent two slips, preferably by the entrance to the dooms for this afternoon. Of course, she said. Do you take Amex? Of course, she said. And just like that, capitalism acted as the great equalizer, and we were in. 

“I have to tell you, we were there earlier, and I just want to warn you because there was a guy named Bob who was really upset that we were there. If you could just give him a heads up that we’re going to be back but that we’re allowed to be there this time, I would really appreciate it.”

“Oh, I heard about you guys. Well, if you guys hadn’t been trying to be sneaky.”

My instinct was to cut her off, to say, “Ma’am,” and explain that we were in fact not being even one degree of sneaky. But, in these instances, sometimes you just need to smile while you eat shit and submit to the flow of the moment. “I understand, I understand.” We let the caravan know the shoot was back on. 

We arrived back at the RV park like soldiers returning home from an unpopular war. We were relieved and ready to resume our lives as we had always imagined living them before violence stole us away. Everyone else stayed inside, looking the other way. Bob most notably was absent. No matter. We had just over one hour until the sun would be behind the dunes, and we’d lose our chance to take the photo that had been planted in my head a year and a half earlier. I literally ran out into the dunes and scouted a spot that was close enough to The Vision and planted a metaphorical flag and said this is it. It was about a quarter mile uphill through the sand from the parking lot. A half-mile journey there and back. It took almost the entire hour for 5 people hauling box after box after box of flowers from the van into the dunes to get all our flowers on site. Our shadows were impossibly long and the soles of our feet were beyond exfoliated. I could feel the light leaving and with each load the futility of the gesture growing grander. On my last trip back to the car to get the last of the flowers, I began talking to Jesse. 

“Bird,” that’s what I called her, “Why am I doing this? What am I doing here?”

And without any exaggeration, as if life and cinema made a baby, directly on cue a toddler that I had somehow not seen once in the last hour, probably 4 years old tops and with hair curly like a tangle of fishing line, pops her little head up from behind a crest of sand and yells at me, “This is fun!” I was so annoyed. This was the exact messaging Jesse spent the majority of our relationship pounding into me. Be grateful, she’d say. Enjoy this, she’d say. This is fun, she was now saying through some kid whose hair I was happy I’d never have to comb. 

The florist team started building the yin-yang as the sun was making its swan dive into the dunes. By the time the construction was finished, the sun had fully said goodnight. The sky was making its move from blue to purple. Venus was up there. Everyone was shivering. The old men were in their costumes and one was using a cardboard box as a shield from the wind. I went through the process of taking the photos like an ancient priest who knew the ritual but had forgotten the heart of why. The day was, the light was gone. The Vision had faded to oblivion. 

A part of me would have loved to shot put the camera into oblivion. A part of me was curious if maybe the computer could save the images and make them beautiful by adjusting this, raising this level, cloning this thing, removing that thing. But the me that was on the dunes was satisfied and proud of everyone around me if not extremely fritzed. The lengths everyone went to meet The Vision of a yin-yang coming out of the sand, the physical endurance of creating this sculpture of ephemera, it didn’t feel like a failure. The moment felt human and sweet. A moment not quite calling for a margarita, but safely a cheeseburger moment. 

By the time we had packed everything back into the car, it was fully dark. My feet were raw and the thought crossed my mind that we should be arriving in Los Angeles by now. No matter. The caravan stopped at the first In-N-Out we found and we laughed and scarfed like we were a high school sports team that just won districts. We made fun of Bob. We talked about the river. We laughed about things that had nothing to do with the day. We were still moving a million miles per hour. We were ready to say vows. We could do anything. 

The first thing we did was drive home, and that was that. I don’t remember there being a moon. I remember the darkness felt like a weighted blanket on the planet. We passed by two accidents that both looked like there were fatalities involved. Lindsey and I talked about how she and her husband fell in love. We talked a little bit about Jesse. We talked about our kids. The old man kept sleeping in the backseat, waking up occasionally to call his wife or watch a TikTok. My heart hadn’t slowed down yet, and it didn’t even when I was laying in bed. My brain rapidly trying to solve problems that weren’t there. Just fast synapsing that with no direction, no clear message, just to be on alert, just to see if there was a way to save the moment, yet.

The next week I had a job in Boca Raton, Florida. I swam in the Atlantic Ocean and was treated to expensive food all week. The hotel’s gym was nicer than my gym in Los Angeles and the cast was perfect for the script and so easy to take photos of. I went to the local AMC twice. And on my last day, the hotel forgot to wake me up for my flight and I had to scramble out of bed to a flurry of phone calls from my driver and brush my teeth while packing my suitcases. I had laid out clothes the night before but that was all the organizing I had done. 

Two days back from the job I realized what I had done. I had left a hard drive in my hotel room. And on the hard drive was the Yin-Yang shoot. I called the hotel every day for a week, and then once a week for four weeks, and then finally gave up. The shoot was gone. For that matter, every shoot from January 2022-March 2023 was gone. But the very presence of the Yin-Yang photos on that hard drive felt like a driving metaphor. Or at least a driving “Fuck you.” Now, not even a computer could save the photos because they ceased to exist entirely. 

The only thing that exists now is The Vision. I can tell you about the photos. I can tell you they were the most beautiful, poetic, dreamy images I’d personally ever seen. But in fact, they weren’t. I don’t think they were strong and wouldn’t have made much of an impact on any viewers or on my career. But I have never worked harder for an image, especially one that I can’t even point to say, “See! See what we tried to do here?” There are phrases that come to mind like ashes to ashes. Or metaphors of sand and zen gardens. Even the metaphor of the yin-yang is absolutely not lost on me in this instance. The art project might be been the art. Or, sometimes a failure is a failure. It’s a dealer’s choice of metaphors. Why did I get Wayne’s World II’d into this moment? Was the Vision a Trojan Horse of dark magic sent to bring destruction? Right when I was getting back on my feet, right when I was feeling like my creative energy was returning to me? All to set me back to zero, again. I think the further I peel back the layers of the metaphor, the closer to nothing I get. And at a certain point, I have to pull myself back from the edge and just accept it as it is.

Then, I think of the Bird’s, “This is fun,” and wonder if maybe the whole thing isn’t a metaphor and wonder if the whole thing was orchestrated by my wife’s technicolored ghost just so she could laugh at me, with me, and remind me the of how ridiculously amusing this whole stupid world is? For now, I’m landing somewhere in this area: We do these things because we’re pleasure-seeking creatures, and the seeking is what’s most sacred. Wayne didn’t need to put on WayneStock to find meaning in his life. He just needed to seek something. I was seeking Jesse. We were seeking Marigolds. We were seeking children. We were seeking her health. I was seeking purpose through art. I was seeking connection. I was seeking meaning and understanding as to why anything happens at all. And in each instance, the pleasure was always in the seeking. 

Trying to find meaning in existence.