Volcom button-up; Midnight Rider Townes Van Zandt shirt via Bona Drag; rings from Spell and the Gypsy Collective, Southset, Rejoice the Hands and vintage/markets; hat from Camberwell markets.
I’m growing a couple of cacti in my front yard – where my
dog can’t rip them out and chew them up, because that’s what she’s into – and
I’m obsessed with them. I check them every day. One’s a Euphorbia Mammillaris
Variegata that blushes
pink and orange in the sun; and the other is a tiny Opuntia Santa Rita that is
rapidly growing new pads and will eventually be like a purple prickly pear with
yellow flowers.
So this obsession – teamed with recent thistle-harvesting and
flower-pillaging activities – has me wondering: is my newfound fascination with
plantlife a symptom of ageing? As you get older, do parts of your child mind
return? Maybe being more aware of mortality restores your sense of wonder and
fascination with the world.
I was really into plants and animals and mushrooms (in
a non-druggy way) when I was a kid; and I would collect fungi and burrs and
seedpods and flowers and leaves, but there was a whole bit there during
adolescence where I wasn’t really interested. I was just into Dead Kennedys and
drinking and angst and resistance and posters of Trent Reznor.
Also, I distinctly remember being a teenager who was really
preoccupied with trying to make things happen a certain way. Eventually, in my
early 20s, I read that DFW line about trying to engineer your fate, and now I
kind of drift along and just try to make good decisions and work hard without
trying to force anything. But I was also, at 19, right into drinking and
smoking and putting on all those artistic-literary affectations. I later realised
that drinking and smoking actually made me a worse artist, so I scaled that rightback
too. Maybe getting rid of those compulsions and preoccupations freed up some
time for me to start looking at and appreciating the natural world again.
Anyway, I’m thinking about this because I sometimes see
qualities of my parents surfacing in me – which is in no way a bad thing – and
I am just so looking forward to heading home to the farm at the end of this
week. I’m looking forward to walking through the garden with my mum while she
tells me about her different plants, whether they’re happy and what lives in
them; and to seeing my dad walk into the big wooden kitchen at midday, with
some delicate, beautiful insect or bird cupped in his broad oil-stained palms. I’m
even looking forward to hearing those goddamn cicadas for a second.
Over the past few years, I think I’ve softened my resistance
against life’s inertia, which is making things a little easier. There’s a
difference between working hard and struggling against reality, although both
are hard fights. But anyway, being psyched on a colour-changing cactus comes
with way less complications and contingencies than some of the things I fretted
over when I was younger.