a flower's dream

I wish I had a buck for every photograph ever taken of a night-blooming cereus. Who could resist trying to show the slow-motion yet visible unfolding of that exquisite flower at least once? Millions of pictures are taken of the process, as if to prove the unbelievable. A camera cannot, however, record that fragrance. It remains imaginable only to initiates. I won't go on. Assuming there have been an infinite number of images made, I'm sure there have been even more inadequate attempts to describe it in words.

This is more about demonstrating one of the few things I can do with my new iPhone. No one told me it would require an advanced degree to run the damn thing, but its camera seems to be very user-friendly. So I let it have a go at the cereus:

Hmmm... not bad for incandescent lighting.

Then I found the flash.

The vain gardenia tried to compete.

At that moment, an amazing thing happened.

I don't know if it was the iPhone or the cereus,

or maybe it's just my imagination,

but, to me, this looks like a picture of a flower dreaming.

What do you think?

optimism

Two days ago, I was sure I smelled a gardenia.

I was sitting in traffic at the time, so it was obviously an aromatic hallucination.

Tail pipes notwithstanding, I was possessed by the fragrance.

Though the climate here will surely kill it,

I bought a gardenia plant today.

It's like chocolate; sometimes, you just gotta have it.