Of Old Winter Friends, Seasonality and the Virtue of Patience
A consistent enough ikebana practice will cultivate two traits within your soul. First, your awareness of certain flowers in nature will increase. Second, their seasonality will become part of your own.
I have become much more observant of these vegetal beauties growing here and there each year. As I write this inaugural entry of 2024, the Narcissus’ time slowly comes to a close while the Japanese plums shyly start to blossom.
Last month, I bent the Narcissus’ delicate leaves into shape for a few sessions. I patiently rolled them on a wooden chopstick in the chilling winter air. They were different plants than last year, but the chopstick was the same one my mistress gave me the first year I got acquainted with the suisen (水仙 - the Japanese term for the Narcissus Genus).
Since then, a lifetime ago, my love of flowers has only deepened. If I think about my work again, I can’t help but wonder if these Narcissus were not, after all, a new utterance of the ones I sacrificed to my clumsy hands years prior.
Who can tell if my old winter friends do or do not possess multiple lives? All I know is I have only the one to hone my skills.
And that process seems so slow, ever so slow. Yet, I patiently bend, cut, and twist branches and stems, not unlike the seasons when they wrench time with their cycles.