12 September 2023 Rubber, yellow rubber petals—rubber is soft padding. It can be poked, and it will take on its original form, bounce back. It will bounce back; it will take on its default shape. You can try to make an impression, but unless you keep pressing, it will just go back to its default shape, its natural shape. If it is pressed consistently for a long time, it will take on that indentation as its default shape that will become its new default shape, natural shape. Rubber is soft, pliable; rubber is nice to press up against. Rubber likes to bunch up; rubber objects like to rub together, press up against each other, feel each other's softness, and slowly take on new natural shapes pressed up against each other. When one of the objects goes away, they will slowly change their shape again and expand into the vacuum left by the object that left.

It looks comfortable, seems comfortable when on a bumpy journey; they don't rattle unless the rubber wears away to the bone. If heat is applied to the rubber, it will change shape quickly; all stubbornness will be forgotten. Yellow rubber, fat, and self-sufficient, narcissism. Rubber will smoke in fire and make a terrible stench. Fake rubber flowers. The flowers grow paler, bleaching in the sun. They don't blaze; they seem cool in their air-conditioned spaces, but how easily they melt and warp when the air-conditioning breaks, and they feel again the sting of the hot noon African sun, the sweltering heat of their spaces designed for air-conditioning.

16 September 2023

18 September 2023

Contrast—how different they seem, order and chaos, Apollo and Dionysius. The blood that seems to trickle around Apollo, a third element, following the contours of the flowers in their arrangement, bleeding into the chaos, covered by both, completely obscured by the pale yellow flowers, translucently by the more chaotic shrubbery leaves. Apollo takes every opportunity to seemingly align with the patterns of flowing blood, muddying the waters, conflating, confusing, obscuring, advertising, being loud, attracting attention, attracting approval—an avalanche of yellow flowers drowning out the real, presenting a pleasant option, an easy option, making it seem unnecessary to bother with anything more difficult. Oh, but how much devastation arises from that; how the real imposes, the subconscious presses in and out, manifesting strange anomalies, unable to resolve into something rational, acceptable, pleasant, unable to be assimilated, absorbed into the structured yellow, those fake-looking rubber and vacuous flowers that never seem to satisfy for long, never able to satisfy completely. Running from one flower to the next, desperately seeking satisfaction, well-being—obsessively. How unsecular they become, claiming rationality, and then devolving into irrationality after a while, then presenting a new rationality, which one can ride temporarily, which fills the hole and satisfies, for a time, but then disappoints again.

The strategy of this flaming bush—becoming addicted to the new, the replacement, the thing that satisfies temporarily, and being compelled to exploit, and then rationalizing the exploitation, inventing words that label and cover and euphemize, to make everything pleasant once again, to make it unnecessary to confront the abject exploitation. Then, as a result of this habit, to become retarded in maturity, soft, becoming aesthetic retards, all the while laughing, smiling warmly, lovingly, clinking glasses filled with drink. When one drinks alcohol, one does not become 'high', no, one becomes 'tipsy', and at the very worst 'drunk'; oh, but then it is excused, understood, accepted, even celebrated—one has attained the cloak of 'legend', pumped full with honor, money, and pride, shining, reflecting the blazing sun from one's fake rubber pale yellow petals and vacuous pure white center.