Bractism

The other day I walked by some blooming Spanish lavender in someone's front yard in Croydon. The entire garden was overgrown with the purple flowers with huge springtime bracts erupting from each flowerhead like the botched lip injections on a sea of Instagram superstar wannabes. I've seen bracts on a lavender before, and these were something special.

Well, a couple days of fucking flowers everywhere later (and a sideways rain storm that thrashed the house with water and petals to boot) I kind of figured I'd imagined those gigantic lavenders in Croydon. I was walking that way again today, and so I double checked and lo and behold there was the tiny field of jumbo bracts in vibrant, pale purple.

I wanted to take a photo, but from every perspective other than my own it would have looked like I was photographing some strangers' living room window, so I didn't. I just enjoyed the view as I walked by. And because my hamstring tendinopathy was making me miserable I pondered the fact that in my mortal life I will never contribute anything meaningful to society, not even something as simple as a field of lavender, or even a picture of one. 2,375 journal entries all combined felt less valuable than one flower.

But then I thought, maybe the world needs me just to observe the bracts. Maybe among those hundreds of purple blooms there is one flower that no other set of eyes came to rest on but mine. I can offer that for free. That's something.