Deception of Beauty (or Eclipsed by Rot)
By: Oliver Cates
I find myself in bed again, my limbs glued to the sheets. I can see the light shining through my window and feel the sun’s warmth pushing its way in. My mouth is dry, and my stomach is tight with hunger. I groggily sift through my thoughts, trying to pull forward an inkling of motivation to move from where I currently lie. The only thing I can find is the need to go to the bathroom. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to propel my body out of bed. It wouldn’t last, though, and I returned to my place of rest. My body fits into the mattress as if it’s molded around me, and my blankets weigh on me like topsoil. I go dormant once again.
When I heard that my school was host to a strange flower that smelled of rotting meat, I was more than intrigued. I had to see it! I asked my supervisor if I could use my lunch break that day to go to the university greenhouse and see it, and she agreed. We pulled up the livestream of the plant on one of the work computers so we could both watch it while we worked.
Amorphophallus titanum is also colloquially known as the “corpse flower”. This monstrous native of Sumatra, Indonesia, can grow to be 8 feet in height. Unlike other flowers, which bloom in regular intervals, the corpse flower blooms in irregular patterns. Most corpse flowers wait until they are 8-10 years old before blooming for the first time. The corpse flower goes through periods of “dormancy”. Though infrequent, corpse flowers do in fact bloom. When they do, their petals roll back from the central stalk, and it exposes itself to the world bravely. Even more unusual, they only bloom typically for 12 or so hours.
Our university had grown this flower from infancy, and at the time of blooming in 2022, it was 8 years old. The flower chose a time in which I was attending the university to bloom, and I couldn’t help, as I watched it unfurl its petals over the livestream, but feel a strange connection to it. I felt drawn to the flower, as if Zeus (the name it was given), had some otherworldly presence in my life. Not very many people got the chance to smell a blooming corpse flower, after all, and I so happened to be in just the building over.
The corpse plant has a tree-like structure that will grow when it is young in order to capture rays from the sun and other nutrients. This single tree is equivalent to one leaf for this plant, but it appears as a perfectly ordinary, albeit a bit small, palm tree. The spadix, or the internal organ of the plant responsible for reproduction, is kept hidden inside a massive bud that utilizes this “tree” to grow.
“Normalcy” is the between stage of depression and hypomania. Bipolar II typically presents as long periods of depression to varying degrees, and less frequent periods of hypomania. Hypomania is different than mania, which can be dangerous and result in hospitalizations. Instead, hypomania may present as extreme optimism, being abnormally upbeat, hyperactive, and an exaggerated sense of well-being and self-confidence. If hypomania symptoms do not result in harmful behaviors, it can be hard to notice.
It begins as a feeling in my chest. It is like a surge of physical energy bubbling up in my chest, and it spreads across my body. I know that this means I have up to 24 hours to do… well, everything. Once the feeling spreads into my throat, I get started. I make a list of tasks and begin to complete them in an agitated manner. I am easily distracted, switching between music and a podcast, switching between tasks, leaving things open or undone, doing things on my phone, and talking to myself. For now, I am superhuman. I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. I sign up for volunteer work, I say yes to hanging out with friends, I agree to extra shifts at work. My energy is finite, and but I easily forget that in the moment. I buy a gift for my boyfriend instead of dinner, because I’m not hungry anyways. Life is short! I skip a class because I want to do something else that I deem more important. I ignore a work email because I am busy living.
When a corpse flower blooms, it illustrates why it gained such a morbid name. The plant emits a horrible, pungent smell that some describe as rotting flesh. One could say that during this brief window, the plant is sickeningly beautiful. It draws humans in with its mass and beauty, then confounds our senses with its putrid smell. The gorgeous flower draws in animals by mimicking their food, and its appearance tricks humans into inhaling its putrid aroma.
Watching it over a livestream wasn’t enough to do it justice. The moment I stepped into the biology building, the smell hit me. It was like a zoo had manifested in the building. As I waited in line to see the flower, a professor explained the process of blooming and dormancy to us, and I felt my eyes fixated on the plant. It had this pulsing, palpable energy that I couldn’t explain. As I moved through the line, the energy, and the smell, grew stronger. By the time I was face-to-face with Zeus, I was transported to the first time I smelled rotting flesh.
I was on a dark, old dirt road in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. I had impulsively agreed to go drinking and ghost hunting with a small group of friends, one of which swore to stay sober and drive us. The rest of us packed beers into the trunk, and drank at least two before we even got into the car. Legend had it, there was a ghost of an old man with a lantern on this backwoods road, and we were determined to find him. About halfway down the road, I begged for us to pull over so I could pee in the woods. We did, and I stumbled through the darkness to find a spot that was somewhat shielded from the rest of the car. I smelled a sour, pungent odor that I thought must be coming from the trash bags scattered along the road’s edge. After I concluded my business, I turned on my phone’s flashlight, and it shone directly into the eye of a newly dead deer.
Once a corpse flower has finished blooming, it dies. The spadix will wilt, all 8 feet of it, and seemingly die completely. And yet, beneath the surface, the corm, or root structure, of the plant remains. It will eventually grow another leaf, and begin a long journey of gathering nutrients to grow another flower in 8 to 10 years.
If I’m lucky, my hypomania will only result in increased productivity. However, this isn’t always the case. The day before a solar eclipse, I felt the surging in my chest. I felt a sense of grand belonging in the universe and an intense sense of connection to mankind and the stars above. A solar eclipse wouldn’t occur near me again for another 20 years, and I easily decided to drop everything in my life and go see it. The connection I had felt with Zeus was now pulling me towards the eclipse.
I woke up that morning with a renewed sense of purpose, the surge of energy pulsing through my body. I drove 2 hours to see the eclipse in totality, and it took me 5 hours to return home. I blew what little money I had in my bank account on gas and gas station food. The next day, I maxed out my credit card purchasing a gift for my boyfriend.
Once I had stood before Zeus, inhaling his awful aroma for a few moments, we parted ways. I returned to work, where Zeus was beginning to die on the computer screen. I watched him slowly crumble and fall, taking with him the intense energy he had been feeding me all day. Zeus and I returned to dormancy once more, together.
The cycle begins anew. The corpse flower will spend its quiet years mainly beneath the ground, growing its leaf to capture the sun, and waiting for the right time to bloom again. I resume my daily life, plagued by a vague sense of depression that is muted by my medication, my hypomania waiting for the right time to electrify me once again. The cycle, though now calm and subtle, is ever recurring, ever returning. The flower will bloom again. I will become invincible again. The flower will experience death, and I an ego death.
Zeus will bloom again, before I graduate. I will once more be able to feel his electromagnetic field that draws me in, and smell the terrible odor it emits. I’ll be reminded of the deer. I’ll be reminded of both of our dormancy’s. Zeus’ blooming will draw crowds, while mine will be less and less noticeable. Zeus and I will forever share a kinship, and I will always return to see him bloom.
Oliver James Cates is a queer Tennessean with a passion for bringing voice to LGBTQIA+ issues, literacy freedom, and Southern literature. His work ranges from the personal to the fantastical, including genres of poetry fiction and nonfiction. He is currently earning his BA in English Education at Austin Peay State University and plans to pursue his MA in English within Tennessee.IG | Website
