There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns ('AAA)

The corpse flower reeks for beetles that can’t pass through polycarbonate. Pollen is sent between greenhouses. When it blooms it’s humans who come, for the spectacle. The smell kept its function after losing its reason. During the pandemic, S. Leyva brought one to an abandoned Art Deco gas station in Alameda. A living thing blooming inside a present ruin. In Guatemala City, Félix Candela designed a gas station. Demolished before the law could protect it. One photograph, in the archive of Arq. Estrada. What remains is a skeleton. “The whole stalk turns into pus and fiber and other mucusy-like substances, and then dries out. It’s probably really tired and spent.”(S. Leyva) Heats itself. Blooms for twenty-four hours. Collapses. Sleeps for years. Octavia Butler wrote an epigraph for a novel she never finished. She died before she could. There is nothing new under the sun, but...