For years, Jacinta has chased the purple dragon. When Spring rolls around she transforms from a mild-mannered art teacher to a ravenous fiend looking for her next hit of that sweet, sweet jacaranda photography.
She got her first taste of the power of the jacaranda shot when she acquired her first iPhone several years ago. She made her way to South Perth and joined a crowd on the crest of a hill that overlooked an entire street lined with purple trees.
Her insta-photography page didn’t know what hit it. Her shot netted well over triple the likes her usual content gets. It even managed to out-yield her photos of the South Freo Power Station. From that moment on, she bled purple like a haemophilic Grimace at an aspirin party.
Fast forward to 2020 and her addiction has progressed somewhat. She has ditched the basic world of VSCO and financially crippled herself with the purchase of a Canon Eos 80d plus a fark off super lens so powerful it could spot the class at an Ascot races party.
She lets her husband know over breakfast that she has made plans for them. Yep, another weekend spent crawling the Perth suburbs looking for the elusive unphotographed jacaranda street. Although, many believe such a place only exists in myth.
After 4 hours of driving around aimlessly, her husband suggests they go that “nice spot in Applecross”. Jacinta cannot believe her ears and immediately questions whether she can stay married to such a monster. She snaps, “everyone has a photo of that spot!”
Finally, they stumble across a spot in North Perth that isn’t mentioned on any of the lifestyle listicles her community so religiously adhere to. Bingo. All her jacaranda induced anxiety melts away like she was sitting on a spoon above the Bic lighter of insta-clout.
She rushes home and uploads the shot to her socials are waits to be crowned the new queen of the bloom. She includes a caption about childhood memories or someshit and then buries her 30 hashtags deep down in the caption. Ashamed a grown woman is writing #like4like and so forth.
Things are going to plan until a fellow addictaranda asks her if she can post her photo to her FB page. She obliges but cancels her afternoon jacaranda hunt to monitor the post carefully.
It’s not long until she flies into a rage when multiple people recognise the spot and post their own photos in the comments of it. To make it worse, she then sees a comment from an Aussie flora purist, “I really think we should be celebrating native trees, not introduced species”. Not on her watch.
So, she does what any adult would do and creates a fake FB profile to ruthlessly crush everyone who dares try to steal her thunder. Her husband is forced to intervene after Jacinta begins stalking profiles and posting pictures of people’s kids and asking why they are so ugly.
Although not much can be done for Jacinta, she had stared too long into the jacaranda abyss and now the jacaranda abyss was staring right back.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?