I ask myself how such tiny brown, dry seeds are able to turn themselves into leafy, green lifeforms in a matter of days. My friends laugh at me because I have an "obsession" with tomatos. Next to the window where their five-sectioned box sits is a huge oil painting on paper, a bigger-than-life-size plate of tomatos towers above our living room, their insides sliced in half like a science class vivisection, waiting to be studied (or eaten).

This painting is where it all started: my tomato obsession. Or at least it is where I will pretend it started because I swear in my heart that I am not obsessed with the slimy-inside tough-skinned fruit. I was taking a class in painting last year and the teacher decided to assign rather specific tasks. Paint an object dear to you, but do it in giant size.

Just getting back from my summer of love in San Francisco, it was hard for me to think of painting my passions through a tiny object. I didn't want to paint New York small scale material items, I wanted to paint Dolores Park in the evening, long heartbreaking final nights crying in my lover's bed, because I had to leave California for the simple reason that school was waiting for me on an opposite coast.

After a long struggle with idea-lessness, lying awake and stressed in bed at night, I finally discovered a balm for my worries: the soft ripened tomato my roommate had placed in a wooden bowl on the kitchen table. I will say these thoughts passed my mind, it was kind of red like a heart, open and bloody. Red like passion. But more than those conceptual tidbits I just wanted to use a lot of red paint and get lost in the process of slathering it onto the huge, three by four feet slice of gessoed paper that would be in front of me during my studio class six hours a week. Paint, and have the chance to review the thoughts that clogged my mind as I did so, having had little time to reflect during my busy city days. I had a lot to figure out that wasn't seeming to figure in my head just yet, leaving that love three thousand miles behind.

My teachers became convinced that I had a tomato obsession, after seeing my very passioned complete painting. Make tomato sculptures. Make drawings about tomatos. Do you realize the feminist conotations of your tomato painting? In my mind, I was relieved. I'd spent one sophomore semester in my school's fine arts department, never seeming to be able to "fit in" to the art style they were looking for. To me, their standards were a bunch of useless ideals in the real world, but it sure didn't hurt my ego (and desire to paint more, confidently) having people like what I did.

This all lead to my loose letting-go of my tomato the summer following that red-inspired year at school. After believing that I couldn't have one more bad roomate situation, since my situations in the previous year had finally been good, my positive predictions were turned around. I was placed in the apartment from hell, hibernated in my room, and stored all of my kitchen supplies, living room paraphenilia, and paintings away in my closet, away from the sloppy roommates who sat on the couch watching rent-a-movies day in and out.

There was one object of mine which I finally decided to place in the messy common area of my new home: a five-compartment box filled with black store bought soil. I shoved a few of the seeds I had bought and never used months before during my so-called "tomato obsession stage", when a teacher had insisted I plant tomatos in a sculpture I had made for class (to no surprise, the sculpture had nothing to do with tomatos in the first place). Of course they would never grow, but I chose to keep the soil moist and watered as the tiny paper package instructed, a dim hope in my mind that suculant green stalks and ripe red fruit would pop up.

I was shocked to see, upon my dash for my room three days later, tiny green sprouts popping up everywhere inside the window box. My plants were growing; a miracle of life. I watered them every day thereafter and they continued to grow, to reach for the light, leafy fingers pointing out the window once the sun went down.

In all honesty, my own condition was fairly poor that summer. I was a homebody, needed to feel somewhat welcome and comfertable in the small New York space I was alotted. If if weren't for having my own room, I would have gone crazy, insane; no means to block out my roommate as she made a point to not reply to my "hello", clipping her toenails on the living room couch.
But those tomatos offered some sort of hope everyday when I came home. In the sweltering New York City summer heat, they were happy to see me, glad to drink the tap water I fed their soil from a drinking glass. They grew tall that summer, tiny dry seeds blooming into two-foot high stalks by late august.

Fall is around the corner and I thought they would never die. This week, I reluctantly stopped watering them and they have shrivelled into short, beige-brown twigs. Nothing like the juicy green bodies and leafy stalks that promised to bear fruit someday, I swore by the look of health in their roots.

My mother told me they would never bear fruit. It was silly to plant garden tomatos in a tiny box on a windowsill in summer New York City. They might be sprouting already, but their lives would only last so long before their bitter demise. I chose not to believe her, in the back of my throat where reality underruled a passion. I'd made something come alive by tucking little dried pebbles beneath dirt on my windowsill. I'd forgotten what it felt like to do these activities as a preschool aged child, the smile that must have filled my face when my plants showed their little green heads.

The truth was, I knew nothing about gardening. I was raised in the suburbs and hadn't shown any interest in my mother's backyard activities since my sudden allergy to everything outdoors popped up in the sixth grade. I'd blindly followed the directions on the back of the tomato seed package that had been sitting around my place since last semester, and surprisingly, life was born there on a filthy Manhattan windowsill.

Every night last summer, watering had been a joy. As the sun set, my baby tomato plants would reach taller towards the sky, searching for its warmth in the moonlight. They moved, changed in shape from noon to night. There was tiny life in those leaves, fed them water poured from a drinking glass, flooding into their soil.

The truth was that they were the only life in my home. Due to extrenuating circumstances, I was forced to move into an apartment that didn't welcome me with its piles of dirty dishes, cigarette smoke, and unfriendly roommates. I was surprised that these plants could grow in such a solemn environment. I glanced at them in disbelief every day as I passed by on my way to hiding out in my bedroom.
With August came new roomates and my room transformed from solemn and messy to bright, clean, and friendly. Despite all of this happy change, my plants weren't doing so well. Their two foot high bodies began to droop and they no longer reached for the sunlight once the sun went down. I watered them as much as usual, but their soil remained damp the following day. I skipped days of watering and their leaves grew dry, soil still soggy. It was mid-September, possibly not a time to grow tomato plants?

"They're dying," I told any and every visitor who would listen, hoping that they'd so happen to once have been a farm girl back before their Manhatten days, know how to save a dying tomato plant.

"Looks like you should toss them out," my roomate responded one day, looking over their leaves, spotted with a strange white tomato rash, the curve of their spines, like bad posture dropping their tiny heads towards the damp soil. They were already half their height of two weeks before, leaves crispy and ready to fall off onto our kitchen table.

This week I let them finsh their lives thirsty. They slowly shriveled more and more at the chilly air blowing in from the window. I had to go away for a week, and therefore saved myself the sight of their slow death until I was able to return to my kitchen and give them a proper burial in a brown paper grocery bag. Their box still sits on the windowsill, its compartments empty of life but filled with soil, hungry for my own inspiration to start over. Waiting for the day I will plant seeds with hopes they will bloom past this autumn, through the dawn of winter.