
- To ingest part of Dieffenbachia Picta or Dumbcane as it is commonly known, will lead to paralysis of the mouth, lips, and tongue, causing temporary muteness.
- The panic at being struck dumb is constricted to a mere mechanical clatter in your head.
- Try not to ask yourself ‘When will this end?’
- The placement of the houseplant designates a zone of potential silence, a selected frame of domestic insistence.
- It is an icon of both latent material, chemical effect and the dissolution of language.
- Its effect is a physiological, existential swelling.
- Dumb paralysis becomes immobility becomes time passing, boredom or durational obstinacy.
- Mid-afternoon, ‘downtime’, French windows.
- Now turn away.
Juliette Blightman, Richard Birkett

a work of Blightman

a work of Richard Birkett