Flower Crack

Buy expensive flower seed and you're sure to receive some in these plastic vials, the seed carefully and systematically measured out, never a seed too many. The irony of the seed coming in vials is not lost on me. It's as if the seed distributors are well aware of my dependency on them, the addiction that guides all my decisions and haunts my every waking hour.

Yes, it is true. I am an addict. Addicted to beauty, to color, to form; to the enhancement of life through aesthetics. Always have been, always will be. When I was a little girl I would rake the shoreline for shells and, in complete innocence, seek out the tiniest ones, no larger than a centimeter across. They would be pastel hued, rainbow like (and in hindsight, much like a tree peony bloom) with a glorious, iridescent sheen from both the saltwater and the recent passing of their mollusk inhabitants, and they would be the most beautiful ones of all the shoreline despite their diminutive size.

My day would be more complete clutching the shells in my hand, knowing that I could have them close to me until my need for them dissolved and my attention moved to something else.

Granted, my sense of aesthetics has matured somewhat from when I was a little beachmonger, and I have sunk into a profession that helps fulfill my addiction....but it still never seems enough for me. I guess that is an inherent problem with a dependency on beauty and the perception of beauty. That yes, it enables a sense of clarity and exaltation that enables me to get through the day and make sense of this wild and chaotic world, but ultimately it is still external to my self and is all too momentary for true peace. Flower crack. Better watch yourself.