In just about every culture but ours, chrysanthemums are symbolic of death. I don’t actually know what the fuck they mean here, something like, you’re cute, and maybe we should get a puppy. They are probably the trademarke of Zanax, or more appropriately, Aldous Huxley’s nightmare realized: Soma.
To be honest, I’ve never taken the time to bend over and smell one of these flowers, but to borrow from Steinbeck and D.H. Lawrence, who rather obsessed about them, Chrysanthemums smell bittersweet. Steinbeck was overbearingly sexual in his phallic description of their long stalks and the delicate things women’s hands did with them. Lawrence’s descriptions here mostly symbolic associations; physical foreshadowing of inevitable death and lament. At least where I came from, they were still the decorative vegetation of choice among cemetery landscapers.
So…
You know the stripped smell? Cheap sick-sweet perfume with cheap citrus undercurrents, applied heavily between the breasts and ass crack? That’s it. The Odor of Chrysanthemums. Life mimicking art. Sad art. Defiant little phoenixes, wearing the essence of the flowers that will one day be planted around their lonely graves, after unobserved passings.
Damn, I would like them so much more if they somehow realized this irony.
This stream of (chrysanthemum) consciousness came to me at my best friend’s bachelor party, rubbed across my face by just such an entertainer. It has soaked in and permeated her bikini top, threadbare from too frequent takings on and off. That stuff is indelible; the odor of chrysanthemums stayed with me for days. It effervesced citrus sweet from her nooks and crannies, but the essence was unmistakable in the ripe and fertile breasts sewn with butchers’ chord to her anorexic body and dying soul.
A memorable description of the chrysanthemums from Steinbeck’s such named short story was that the flowers could not be grown from seed. Sprouts from a flower’s main stalk must be separated, uprooted, and transplanted to start a new growth. This rings eerily true allegorically as well in the allegory.
So why do we keep going. Why did I pay these two specimens a large quantity of money to entertain my best friend the week before the supposed happiest day of his life? I’m certainly not the only, or the smartest man to see the decay behind the makeup and wonder how they came to be.
The answer is probably as simple and intuitive as it is terrifying.
It’s sexy. The dying of a vibrant flame is a visceral, instinctively pleasing thing to watch. The extent to which they ignore inevitable tragedy is beautiful and brave. They are riding the crest of our culture’s ever-building rogue wave of intentional deception, self-depreciation, and conditional morals. They have evolved, like the octopus, and are quite possibly a superior species. When the shit hits the fan, we know the cockroaches and the strippers will survive. They’ll have our money, our secrets, and our shame. They’ll stop wanting diamonds and manicures and realize they can be empresses.
And let me be the first to declare my allegiance! I am ready to be a drone in your honey trapped hives. The “Vote for Tits” ticket should be able to easily claim the bulk of the power seats by 2020, and I am on board early. I am ready to ride this silicon wave to its crest, to where it will inevitably break and roll back, leaving only the odor of chrysanthemums.
To be honest, I’ve never taken the time to bend over and smell one of these flowers, but to borrow from Steinbeck and D.H. Lawrence, who rather obsessed about them, Chrysanthemums smell bittersweet. Steinbeck was overbearingly sexual in his phallic description of their long stalks and the delicate things women’s hands did with them. Lawrence’s descriptions here mostly symbolic associations; physical foreshadowing of inevitable death and lament. At least where I came from, they were still the decorative vegetation of choice among cemetery landscapers.
So…
You know the stripped smell? Cheap sick-sweet perfume with cheap citrus undercurrents, applied heavily between the breasts and ass crack? That’s it. The Odor of Chrysanthemums. Life mimicking art. Sad art. Defiant little phoenixes, wearing the essence of the flowers that will one day be planted around their lonely graves, after unobserved passings.
Damn, I would like them so much more if they somehow realized this irony.
This stream of (chrysanthemum) consciousness came to me at my best friend’s bachelor party, rubbed across my face by just such an entertainer. It has soaked in and permeated her bikini top, threadbare from too frequent takings on and off. That stuff is indelible; the odor of chrysanthemums stayed with me for days. It effervesced citrus sweet from her nooks and crannies, but the essence was unmistakable in the ripe and fertile breasts sewn with butchers’ chord to her anorexic body and dying soul.
A memorable description of the chrysanthemums from Steinbeck’s such named short story was that the flowers could not be grown from seed. Sprouts from a flower’s main stalk must be separated, uprooted, and transplanted to start a new growth. This rings eerily true allegorically as well in the allegory.
So why do we keep going. Why did I pay these two specimens a large quantity of money to entertain my best friend the week before the supposed happiest day of his life? I’m certainly not the only, or the smartest man to see the decay behind the makeup and wonder how they came to be.
The answer is probably as simple and intuitive as it is terrifying.
It’s sexy. The dying of a vibrant flame is a visceral, instinctively pleasing thing to watch. The extent to which they ignore inevitable tragedy is beautiful and brave. They are riding the crest of our culture’s ever-building rogue wave of intentional deception, self-depreciation, and conditional morals. They have evolved, like the octopus, and are quite possibly a superior species. When the shit hits the fan, we know the cockroaches and the strippers will survive. They’ll have our money, our secrets, and our shame. They’ll stop wanting diamonds and manicures and realize they can be empresses.
And let me be the first to declare my allegiance! I am ready to be a drone in your honey trapped hives. The “Vote for Tits” ticket should be able to easily claim the bulk of the power seats by 2020, and I am on board early. I am ready to ride this silicon wave to its crest, to where it will inevitably break and roll back, leaving only the odor of chrysanthemums.
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