We’d just come from Golden Gate Park and its blooming magnolias. From tulipy pink Asian varieties to moony Southern belles, the canopies were clustered with what looked to me like aerial lotus blossoms offering their petals to the grass–an involuntary gesture fully aware of its prettiness. i had gone into the botanical gardens to see the succulents, but magnolias were evidently on special. i was shocked to read on the park map that, "San Francisco's botanical garden is home to the most significant collection for conservation purposes outside China, where the majority of species grow … Paleobotanists consider the magnolia family to be among the earliest flowering plants, with magnolia fossils dating back nearly 100 million years. Ice Age survivors, they bloom for us now." i'd always favored the succulent garden's otherworldly stalks and fleshy textures, sky-high blooms, and strong scent of dry sage. Past the moon viewing garden, through the Redwood Grove, up on top of the sunny hill, they grow all over each other. Smug, wild, alien. i had only ever been back there alone, and felt bashful of my need to find them. i confessed to my companion that i always half-expected Allen Ginsberg to nakedly trip past me on one of the craggy paths we'd nervously avoided. This little patch was San Francisco to me: clean, strange, boats, gold. Rock n Roll and sex. Shows. Poetry. Japan. Altamont. Joan Didion. Family. The fogbank and the eucalyptus were protection spells without which i had become a different person. Shyly i walked the streets and felt, briefly, that Anton LaVey’s ghost had uncorked a few tiny Victorian fairies from a cobalt bottle so that they might sew my shadow back on. i'd never imagined that something as familiar and genteel as the magnolia also had such a huge capacity for staying power.

Real truth about it is, i had been away from San Francisco for a while. From Brooklyn, i’d made a little list of places i wanted to check in on, and had my own Captain Badass for a tour guide. Our next stop was Amoeba. Not looking for anything in particular, i wandered the vinyl, looking for some point on the alphabet to pull me in. At a random break in the aisle, i began thumbing through “S,” and the first album i paused on was Didn’t it Rain by Songs: Ohia. i tucked it under my arm, but later swapped it out for a Dead Moon reissue. i don’t think i have some kind of cosmic relationship with Jason Molina, but i hadn’t thought about his music in a long time, and then suddenly that album was in my hand, and there were all those magnolias, and even the record i swapped him out for is called up by, of all songs, “Farewell Transmission” from Magnolia Electric Company: “Mama here comes midnight/With the dead moon in its jaws.” Is it too much to include that we had lunch at the Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery? Well, we did. That was Friday afternoon; he died on Saturday.

i was hunched over in bed trying to make it through my first day back in New York when i flipped over my phone and was surprised to see that i had a Facebook message. i was further concerned by the fact that it was from an ex with whom i share a memento mori or three. The message was to let me know about Molina’s death. A few seconds online confirmed what i’d known already: he drank himself to death. The only time i ever saw Molina perform, i was with this ex in Tallahassee. They had never met, but he had reviewed several of Molina’s albums, one slightly unfavorably. That review had always stuck out to me because, in my possibly faulty memory, Molina’s publicist contacted him the day the review went to press and confirmed some very private conjectures William had intuited about the shortcomings of the album. i always take note when those of us for whom, let’s just say, the vampire metaphor doesn’t even begin to explain it–when we recognize each other. Dogs sniffing our way back home like natives unwilling to ignore wayward slaves: silently, we communicate that it is serious. Hold on, Magnolia.