Is this prickly pear half dead? Or is it half alive? Or less than half??

“It’s drying out with grace and beauty,” I thought, when it caught my eye a couple of days ago. Or maybe something in it reflected my own state of mind that day. I scanned it directly on the scanner I have up on the? Hill, letting that prickly pear express itself in it’s last testament in this image. Yet a part of the plant is still 100% alive and carrying on photosynthesis.

I’m always amazed at the? interplay of dead and alive you see when you look closely at things growing in the desert. Some things that look dead spring back to life when it rains. Some things that are alive look dead. Dead things look alive. Others are both at the same time. It depends on your perspective. Maybe there is not s huge distinction between these two states.