Tuesday, June 17, 2025

When Daniel Plainview Planted Wildflowers

Daniel Plainview was consumed by seething hatred since he "slithered from his mother's filth." His words. On sage advice, and wishing to become a better man, Daniel planted wildflowers in his East Tennessee retirement haven, just out back in his field, attenuating his generalized hatred by cultivating a share of beauty. He tended the seedlings and little suckers, experiencing for the first time in his dark life the glory of god almighty in the process. "The glory of the flower." But thanks to confederate Coloniel William Johnson of Alabama, his eponymous Johnson Grass squeezed from the earth, choking and strangling Daniel's enterprise to death, leaving thick bladed Camboian jungles in the wake. And on account of that predation, Daniel returned to his default setting, which was compounded by these events. Drunken, he swore to stalk as many of Johnson's descendants as he could locate and rape them all to death. This was the nature of his condition.