If beauty is motivation to live, and I think it is, then the plants of Hawaii do humanity an enormous favor, reaffirming life with their sensual display. Having ten or more distinct climate zones, the island of Hawaii has an astonishing diversity of plant life to contemplate. And it’s not just the visual sensation of shape, color and texture that is so pleasing…

it’s the compound experience of sounds emanating from shapes moving in the breeze and…

the smells that slip from the colors. Plants are special to people, particularly the bloom, representing love, its blossom and loss, across cultures. Who knows how the flower became such a universal symbol of affection, but it probably has as much to do with frailty as it does sensuality.  But there is evil afoot. The potency, in fact the very meaning of flowers, is under attack.  Within Hawaii, perhaps more terrifying for daring to invade this paradise, are plastic flowers which live here, undead, in profusion.

I’ve been living in a house full of them, and they tried to destroy me!  Like zombies with a familiar shape but no soul, they invaded my space.

Blooms should crush under foot and not spring back to form. But these are sturdy constructions without need of food, light or water. They seem so normal, such good, modern things, advocating for efficiency and durability as they do.

But here is starts, the invasion that ends a life worth living; the insidious assertion made by all plastic flowers that the illusion of feeling is satisfaction enough. Without moisture or movement of their own, they feed on every nosegay of wild violets ever picked with innocence and presented with love. They suck from every prom corsage, wedding bouquet and grave wreath.

They collect dust.

It’s not just the smell of Play-Doh and benzene that reveals them as the undead, it’s also their sound which is insincere. It is the unmistakable sound of plastic, the most malleable of materials; whether in the form of a freezer container or a stamen, it makes the same lifeless thud when struck. *

Like the mutant gene on a healthy chromosome, they look normal but their expression is deforming. Protect your soul! Send these uncorrupted corpses to the landfill where they will live, undead, for a thousand years.

*Observation made by Roland Bathes in his essay, “Plastic”.

The following pencil and gouache studies were made in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.