I WOULD RATHER GO without food than without flowers. Sounds dramatic and it is. I recall a time years ago when I was desperate to touch the natural world. I was living in a third-floor walk-up in Queens, working at Burger King, and going to City University in Manhattan. On my way to class one day, I passed a street vendor selling roses by the bundle in shades of peach, scarlet, and magenta. Time stopped as I heard them whisper two words to every part of my body: “Take me.”
In those days I had a skin-tight budget and lived mostly on chicken livers, which I bought at a cut-rate grocery store for less than one dollar a container. I looked at the flowers. They looked at me. I calculated the cost in
