Cultivating obsession
Apparently my internal algorithm has been abducted by cacti. (P.S.: There's a refreshing desert drink involved.)
Do you ever find your attention captured by something with unnatural frequency? Maybe you’ve looked up an unfamiliar word in a book or a friend has introduced you to a new song and suddenly you see or hear it all the time. I remember when I first noticed someone wearing a utility suit or coverall in a fashionable way, and then I couldn’t stop seeing these adult onesies — in the 2019 movie Booksmart, in group photos of cool women acquaintances, in the catalogs of half a dozen clothing brands. They were everywhere (including, now, my own closet).
To be fair, an emerging trend and my own obsession are responsible for some of the prevalence of this last example, but not all of it, I suspect. There’s an official name for taking note of something for the first time and then seemingly seeing it everywhere — the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or frequency illusion.
I get it. Attention is an antenna and once tuned into something it vibrates on a particular frequency, picking up echoes and reverberations that slot into that wavelength. Lately, my attention is tuned to the cactus channel, and my mind’s own algorithm is rolling out a kind of targeted marketing campaign, turning what might be an illusion of frequence into very real signals to my fingertips and credit cards. I don’t merely have cacti on the brain — I have actual cacti stuff going on in my actual physical life. Not just cacti broadly, either, but things that relate to being dispatched by cacti in one way or another.
Unlike stalkerish “take another look” emails and incessant “suggested” Instagram reels, however, this is the kind of rabbit hole I’m happy to fall into. These are the weirdly wonderful, deserty, cactusy things I’m reading, wearing, and drinking right now.
Current read: Death Valley by Melissa Broder
As far as I can decipher, the cactus vibrations started when my son and I ventured out to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day. I had two things on my shopping list:
Joy Sullivan’s Instructions for Traveling West (you can hit up a previous post to hear me read one of her poems)
Anything intriguing that caught my eye
I picked up the Sullivan book, whose cover features Joshua trees, various other succulents, and cacti. And then I spotted this cover: Matte ivory dust jacket. Glossy, candy-pink type. Pencil-sketched eye. And a spiny, verdant prickly pear pad weighing down the center of the cover like a complicated teardrop that can’t quite fall.
In the opening chapters of Death Valley, woman checks into a Best Western in the California desert to escape the illnesses of father and husband and, ostensibly, to write. Woman lies about heading out for a hike, prompting the front desk folk to recommend a particular trail, prompting the woman to actually go for a hike on said trail. Woman encounters giant cactus, becomes fascinated with the plant’s gash-scar, and discovers that she can not only widen the scar’s chasm but step all the way into its mystical doorway.
Cactus as portal.
Current scent obsession: Cactus Abduction
Thanks to Jen’s previous post and my subsequent success hitting “add to cart” for a handful of tiny perfume vials from Surrender to Chance, I decided to try my luck with a sampler set from the indie, natural scent brand, Heretic Parfum. And a jackpot did I hit, dear readers. Not only are the names irresistible — I mean, come on, Florgasm? Scandalwood? — but every one of my five picks is delightfully wearable, fun to layer, both heady and still somehow subtle. Cactus Abduction in particular lives up to its name; it’s positively transporting. Here’s how they describe it:
Cactus Abduction is a fever dream inspired by psychedelic summer nights. Curious succulent stems, prolific pads and bizarre scaly branches reach to the sun God, basking in the scorching heat. We have been abducted by the genus Cactaceae or cactus, a family comprising 127 genera with some 1750 known species. Not usually celebrated for their fragrance, we have drawn inspiration from the mysterious night-blooming Cereus, an alien flower pollinated by bats that exudes a spicy, green and addicting aroma into the inky midnight sky.
Cactus as fever dream.
Current drink craving: Prickly Pear Margarita
You know what else is pollinated by bats? The agave plants that give us tequila. Suddenly it’s mid-June and 900 degrees outside. I’m trying not to complain; I’m pretty sure we had a pleasant and longer than usual stretch of spring temps, but memories are short and prone to being fried when the mercury rises too high. Anyway, I’m daydreaming of lounging poolside in a spot where ice-cold drinks are delivered to the arm of my chair. And that has my cactus-attuned brain taking a mental flight to Tucson, where saguaros reign and the pool bar at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort serves puckery pink prickly pear margaritas. I have a nostalgic soft spot for this particular margarita and this particular pool, which have provided relaxation and respite during various trips for family events both joyful and tear-filled.
Lucky for all of us, the resort’s recipe is not a secret, so you can tap into this form of cactus escape wherever you are:
The Ventana Canyon Prickly Pear Margarita
1 ¼ ounce silver tequila
½ ounce triple sec
½ ounce fresh lime juice
¾ ounce prickly pear syrup (you can make your own or buy a high-quality bottled option)Shake with ice and strain into a salt-rimmed, ice-filled glass. Garnish with a wedge of lime.
Cactus as enchantment. If you overdo it, however, you might feel as if you fell into the belly of a saguaro or were abducted by prickly aliens.
What’s your attention antenna tuned to this weekend? Let us know!
This sounds so refreshing! Off to fall down the perfume rabbit hole... 🤩 Thank you for the amazing recommendations!