Weeds Are Not Pretty

I have frightened myself once again, this time simply by going to Lake Bellobrutto.

The lake itself does not scare me. It is not even really a lake. No, what frightens me is the fact that I went there yet again and have come to admire certain aspects of it. That is, my fear emanates from acceptance. Acceptance of Lake Bellobrutto. Acceptance of my fate.

Have I become inured to this despicable isle of the damned? Have I become complacent in my heart? My soul? My mind? My pancreas?

Can I write something that does not end in a question mark?

Yes. I can and I contemplated and I felt as though I have become one of the locals in the sense that I came and I contemplated and did not find myself in contempt.

After all, this non-lake was as ugly as ever. In fact, they--They being the powers that control all aspects of life upon this non-nation in the sea--have managed to make it even uglier.

With the magic of asphalt and concrete and pressed-gravel and the buzz-saw of the chainsaw, they--excuse me, They--have reduced the place to but an oval track with a body of muddy algae-infested water inside of it.

How attractive!

And yet, I hardly noticed.

I have become so accepting of this place, this fake lake park, that it scarcely registered. Instead I found myself admiring--yes, I said ADMIRING!--the flowering weeds.

Wow!

Why these are weeds and not flowers, I do not know. It is more than just a matter of semantics, I imagine. No doubt it has something to do with agriculture and dominion of the land and a sense of what is what and who says what is what. It is why we are humans and not rodents yet we breath the same air and eat the same comestibles and pee in the same cup.

Yet, at that moment, I was not thinking "weeds" or really even "flowers". I was blissfully mindless other than my visual appreciation.

But then came along a woman and a child. The child, a little girl, stopped somewhat near to me--no doubt to the consternation of the mother. (I assumed it was her mother, though I could also assume that she was quite lost, bringing her child to Lake Bellobrutto in the brutish daylight and near a prisoner-person like me--normally, almost all the denizens avoid me, as I avoid them.)

"Look," the girl said, eyeing the same wild grouping of blossoms I had just viewed. "How pretty!"

"Weeds are not pretty," the mother said and grasped the child's frail hand and led her down the newly-minted asphalt path where they could properly admire fencing and posts and drains.

That is when I became conscious that what I was looking at were weeds. When I became self-conscious of my consciousness, or lack of conscious, that here I was at Lake Bellobrutto once again, acting like any other zombieish-humanoid upon this agricultural/human-remanded isle.


Ah.


Look!

Here are some pretty flowers for you:

And here is a butterfly--or a moth; whichever you prefer:

And here is a dead butterfly or moth:

And there you have it.

Goodbye from Soybean Island