In one surreal moment, Ido was up at five a.m., head bursting with frenetic thoughts that demanded to be committed to word, only to delete the draft by accident with no idea as to what had poured out of him, and spent the day in that hazy, drugged up sentimental way, as if he’d lost something about himself in forgetting.
At the office a colleague brought flowers. But one woman’s flower is another man’s weed. And what are flowers but producers and dispensers of pollen? Plant penises. That’s what they are. A bouquet of fragile, disembodied plant penises slowly dying in a jar.
People probably don’t doubt that flowers are nice things. A little piece of life prematurely severed from its roots all for the sake of symbolism. A demure celebration of affordable pleasures. A reminder that on the paths of tribulation of life, it’s ok to stop and smell the flower.
Or they just look pretty.
Next to the potted penis was a small pot of fake grass, provisionally entrusted to him. There’s a metaphor somewhere in the juxtaposition of ephemeral white and immortal, non-biodegradable green.
Ido named the pot of artificial plant Brian. Brian will outlast him, no doubt, as plastic will surely triumph flesh and bring doom to the planet. Over the past few months, Brian inadvertently became a thorn in his side, because Brian doesn’t actually belong here. They had met by chance and he was just left there, unexplained, with so much more still to say. That someone – does she miss him? Does her bedside mourn the silence of his absence?
On Brian’s side, the flower is disintegrating. Before too long, the water will turn, pedals will fall off and wither; the stem will rot, and it will fester. Before long it will become nothing. Such is the fugitive romance of nature’s affection.
But Brian will be there. Brian can never break your heart because Brian is forever. Brian is someone you live and grow old and die with, because he goes with every piece of furniture, and he’ll be evergreen beside your tomb, as unreal as he ever was.
#00117F 