It’s Not Even About the Flowers, But it’s Also Totally About the Flowers

I bought a bunch of flowers a while back. Roses, dahlias, hydrangeas, greenery. Seemingly out of nowhere there was this urgency to make a bouquet. Create something that would help me to breathe. Quench myself in a moment of simple beauty. It was a profound and desperate act wrapped inside the banal task of shopping for spinach and bread and it completely overtook me. A spacious and soothing ether to counteract the onslaught of bad news, which seemed to be all over the place, oozing tar-like out of multiple societal orifices and with a particular vengeance that seemed to say, well, this is what you all get for not paying attention.

High from the immediacy of my secret super great idea, I stayed up late slowly arranging the scents to my satisfaction. Cutting, coordinating, shifting around, observing, breathing in. Feeling the soft velvet petals between my fingers. Taking great pleasure in the simple task. Slowing down. Stopping. Quieting myself down.

I thought about why it is that I never buy bouquets. Maybe it’s time consuming to pick them out. It could be that my life feels too rushed to try to prioritize something that wilts so quickly. As if there is no time for beauty. An obscene idea. Isn’t it that there should be no more wasted time on the homely and stale taupe stickiness where one is left feeling simultaneously trapped, suffocated and abandoned in that never-ending circle of pseudo achievement? Isn’t that what is truly indecent? We’re not cogs in the…