When some cactuses die, they leave intricate brittle skeletons like these behind on the desert landscape. Formerly covered in lush cactusflowers and strands of sinew and spine, they’re nothing now but hollow skeletons of their former selves — hollow, and full of holes.In this way, we’re no different from cactuses. We strand our personalities over the most brittle of psychological structures, we spin stories of our selves over the hollow inner emptiness within us, we cultivate our cactusflowery fictions as if to hide from that existential emptiness — because without them, who are we? Who are we without our fictions, and who are you? What are your own fictions, what are the tales you tell and retell of yourself, the fictions which become stronger with every retelling, the fictions which become you?It’s all fiction, when it comes down to it. And if it’s all fiction, then so is any prescriptive spelling by which ‘cactuses’ ought to be ‘cacti’.
