Night-Blooming Cereus

One of my night-blooming cereus plants is blooming. I snapped this photo about 10:30 last night. By 10:30 this morning, it will look “like a limpid, snotty-beige Kleenex” (to quote a friend). They only bloom one night, but when they do, it perfumes the entire yard. They say bats fertilize the flowers (fruit bats?) but I think there are no more bats in Michigan, sadly.

Anyway — I wanted to show you this amazing flower and tell you how I used it in a painting some years ago. I’d had major surgery about 10 years ago and was on Oxycodone for months. (No, I didn’t get addicted!) Once I recovered enough to resume painting again, I did a symbolic painting of the whole experience. Psychedelic!

Most people didn’t get it. Anyway — it’s symbolic of how woozy and drugged-out I was while on Oxycodone. That’s Picasso (my #1 favorite cat) on his back, buzzed out on catnip. I invented the linoleum pattern he’s laying on, purposely making a starry-crown design, reminiscent of the starry crowns I saw on the statues of the Virgin in some of the churches I’d seen in Mexico. That’s Miss America in back (actually a mis-named male cat), also buzzed out. They’re both lounging on an exotic assemblage of pillows and fabrics, having an unspeakably fabulous time. Somewhere in this painting are a couple big, fat June bugs, buzzing about (but they’re hard to see in this photo). I absolutely HAD to include my night-blooming cereus in the back – with stars, of course. So yes, you could say this was my Oxycodone experience.

I must tell you it was simple for me to quit. I realized that all it was doing to me was making me woozy. It did nothing for the pain. So why take it? The next time I saw my doctor, I handed him the full bottle and said, “Give this to somebody who needs it.” He was flabbergasted. Why do doctors always think we have no self-control?