I Like the Living, Dead Sculptures

It's always the cactus that someone else would call ugly or dead-looking that I not only like but find absolutely beautiful.

Partly, I just like weird things. Emus, for instance, are gorgeous and awesome. Everyone has their own type of preferences.

But the strange cactuses always give me so much to ponder. Some look sculpted, less about lush foliage and more about the shapes that they make. Like my night-blooming cereus, which has skinny arms that reach like tangles through the air, journeying this way and that. Plants like this are poetic in the way that they live.

This picture is from a couple years ago; the plant is much, much taller now.

And plants like this thing are amazing in the way that they live:

Is it alive? Does it look alive? Oh, yes, it's alive--believe it, it's thriving. Hey, it lives a little differently than a rose bush or an apple tree does but it isn't a rose bush and it isn't an apple tree. Its very life is defiance of death.

No water? Hey, that's okay, I can make it, anyway. Piles and piles of sunlight? That's cool, I'll manage. Give me the worst; it makes me thrive. Just watch me; I turn death to life. Those who look at me and think I look funny, they don't understand, and that's okay. I'm a living, dead sculpture, and that in itself is enough to celebrate.

The cactuses that express all that life is, in beautiful sculptures, are the best of all.