"At a moment of widespread protests against the government and trendy calls to 'eat the rich,' the Queen of CondƩ Nast decided the theme of her annual Met Gala should be a short story about wealthy people staving off mobs of plebians."
~ Johnny Oleksinski
After thinking about it.
“'The Garden of Time' tells of Count Axel and his wife, the countess, in their utopia of leisure, art, and beauty; they live in a villa with a terrace that overlooks a garden of crystalline flowers with translucent leaves, gleaming glass-like stems, and crystals at the heart of every bloom. Though, as in all of Ballard’s work (Ballardian, per contemporary dictionaries, has come to represent dystopian modernity, bleak artificial landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social, or environmental developments), there is a dystopian element to their paradise; holding onto it is like trying to keep every grain of a fistful of sand intact in your palm.
Beyond the walls of Count Axel’s villa, an encroaching and chaotic mob draws nearer every hour. To restore tranquility, the count must pluck a time-reversing flower from his garden until there are none left. The story ends with the unthinking mob descending onto the villa, now a derelict property with a neglected garden, in which a statue of the count and his countess stand entangled in thorny belladonna plants."
~ Lilah Ramzi
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