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Wild Flowers [野花]
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It not only takes vibrant colors, elegant shapes and heavenly scents to pronounce the synergetic beauty of the flowers. It is but with their delicacy, fragility, ephemerality and the uniqueness of each and every flower, that makes flowers flowers.
Flowers are beautiful. Seeing them bathing their vigorous corollas in the sun, waving up and down with their frisky little petals, dancing with the rhythm of the breeze, makes you re-realize the very essence of life. Unfortunately, there is a beast. A beast we human gave birth to, but born with the defect of immortality, this dreadfully furious beast is now enslaved us. Made tools out of us all. This beast, is known as "Modern Human Society".
Modern Human Society has an unquenchable appetite for development and progress. It demands advancement regardless of the cost; It changes this world too fast, that once our bodies cannot keep up the pace, we will be rejected as foreign objects, causing sky rocketing cancer rate and the flourish of various torturous conditions; It magnifies generation gaps and tampers our relationships, causing domestic problems and sharp ascending divorce rate; It pollutes the earth and warms the globe, causing consequences beyond this article's capacity; It constitutes laws and rules to monopolize democracy, vaporize freedom, and capitalize justice; It reprograms our brains to let us contentedly work our asses off on jobs most of us don't really give a shit about. In fact, under its tyranny, we're so bloody occupied, that we're basically either too busy winning bread for our loved ones, or too tired to give breaks to ourselves. Those who do not aware the damaging effect of this society, going after the prizes it set up, if they went deep enough, they almost always got their perceptibility impaired to the point that they can no longer appreciate any form of beauty from our mother nature, let alone flowers.
Historically, flowers were our all-time-favorite representatives of beauty, from the Chinese idioms like "beautiful as flowers[貌美如花]", splendid as flowers on brocade[锦上添花]", to "faultless as flowers and full moon[花好月圆]", "beautiful as flowers, impeccable as moon[花容月貌]", we're referring flowers as the crown jewels of beauty. Today however, it's a whole different story. The Chinese version of aforementioned beast somehow despise flowers to a much wider and sicker extent. That the mere appreciation of some inexpensive common flowers is more likely been associated with meager income, inferior education, and/or a poorer taste.
Year by year, floral elements faded away from our cups, basins, pillowslips and bedcovers. Generation by generation, flowery characters dropped out from the names of our classmates, colleagues, friends and family. All year round, we stuck in cities where been struck by lightning is more likely than seeing someone staring at some real blooming flowers.
I found this small cluster of perfectly ordinary wild flowers lying on the river bank the other day (picture below). Even with their lovely tiny little buds, it's not enough to set them apart from the whole bunch of them, I'm not sure why I stopped, but when I set my sight on them, It was like two acquainted strangers glancing at each other. I was in such a profound shock, that I couldn't help but took several pictures of them. From that day onwards, whenever I see this picture, I couldn't stop wondering:
Flowers o' flowers. Nameless flowers of yore.
When did your buds bloom? Who did you blooming for?
Where did your pollen blow? How were your petals galore?
Why did we leave you there? What made us care no more?
Important:
You may find this piece not exactly your cup of tea. If this is the case, please wash off the last registered memory sequence out of your brain and seek medical attention immediately. Please note that the content above is not suitable for children under EIGHTY years old. If you believe you're a minor, do not panic. I'm a good person. I won't tell your mom.
Post comment Comment (14 replies)
- Reply bluephoebe
- i have to say, though i might agree with some of your point of views, this is really a great article, powerful and very impressive. Modern Society has its problems, on certain levels it is indeed bad, but not that bad. Monster might be a too strong word.
BTW, with all due respect, i really think you go too far with your Important. Blogging is all about sharing. we can write what we pleased, but we can't force the others to accept our opinions, can we? to suggest that if we don't like, we'd better see a doctor, or hint we are not mature enough, for me, it's dangerously close to an insult.
- Reply 异物
- bluephoebe: i have to say, though i might agree with some of your point of views, this is really a great article, powerful and very impressive. Modern Society hasI am staggered by your generosity. I really appreciate the few lines you dropped. Enlightened by your reply, I think there are a few things needs to be sorted out. First, a beast is a metaphor I used for something that is both powerful and potentially harmful. It has its own mind, and cannot be easily controlled. and this makes it even more dangerous. But I am however, in no way suggesting or endorsing the nullification of the positive (sometimes even therapeutic) effect of having a beast under one's bedclothes. I kid you not, I just Luv me some beast from time to time. And here comes the second, the "Important" section of above article exists only as a cheap joke intended to be consumed as a cheap joke. I am sorry if it reads or feels like something else. My poor writing skill might be the villain to blame, but you can easily avoid this misunderstanding by setting your "Joke Detector" threshold a little lower, so that you are not as readily to take offense that is not even there. And lastly, here is my love and......
Greetings! :-)
- Reply snowflying
- my friend,if i don't understand wrongly, what you wanna express is our mordern social development destroying the nature. merely the representive one is the beautiful wild flowers. surely a serious social issue,moreover this situations more widely and more deeply now.
by the way, in your wonderful article, i can learn many new words,your english surely good.good luck,my friend.
- Reply SmilingAngel
- Well, it's not good to complain too much, people will not change for you though. It is fine for an abreaction. You know, you are impossible to change the social status too as you are only an individual. I also witness the rapid pace of development has been destroied our mother nature terribly. I feel sad too. I am myself is a plant as well as a flower lover. What can I do, is to accept the fact and try all my best to take care of my plants as well as I can rather than complaining.
Everyone's desires of life is different, maybe some of them wish for a better environment, or the other of them crazy about the modern soceity. It's good to be oneself and enjoy life in your own way.
Well, I beg you are proficient at poetry. Anyway, I like your "wondering"... Thanks for sharing this article.
- Reply sedgehead
- The plant you photographed belongs to the sunflower family (Asteraceae). Obviously, it is a fall blooming species. I don't know this specific genus or species, but I'm guessing it does not grow in the US. I know it does not grow in Arkansas.
- Reply rich
- i guess you're a great observer and thinker as well as a good writer of english. i also feel you are kind of cynical. it might not be a proper word, but somehow it came to my mind. actually i agree with most of what you said. yes we humans are too greedy in many ways and posing a great threat to other plants and life on earth, which should be our friends. good luck, my friend!
- Reply 异物
- snowflying: my friend,if i don't understand wrongly, what you wanna express is our mordern social development destroying the nature. merely the representive one iI am surprised that my whining and bitching actually helped somebody. Thanks my friend!
- Reply 异物
- SmilingAngel: Well, it's not good to complain too much, people will not change for you though. It is fine for an abreaction. You know, you are impossible to changeThank you for your insightful reply. I agree that it's unhealthy to complain too much, but people will change for you, not by complaining though. Chairman Mao did that grandly a while back. An average individual like me, may not have what it takes to change a whole lot of people, or even myself. but my personality, my attitude, what I did, what I'm doing and the way I interact with my surroundings changes how people view me, and how people view me, changes how people treat me. See? people do change for me, while they remained mostly unchanged unfortunately. So I guess we're both right. Anyway, I like your style, frank and open. Keep it that way!
- Reply AlexG
- Someone believe in action, someone believe in the power of knowledge sharing. The former may easily neglect knowledge sharing is also a kind of action or they just think this kind of action is just futile. However I believe in both. I think that's why our ancestors passed down their insight as a form of culture. When I say culture I don't mean confucianism, I hate confucianism, it's a tumor of chinese culture.
- Reply Edelweiss
- Interesting. Flowers, beautiful as they are, are not that fashionable in names. Do you think so?
- Reply 异物
- Edelweiss: Interesting. Flowers, beautiful as they are, are not that fashionable in names. Do you think so?I don't.
