mrudzio

Nature lover

Enjoyed it very much. Thank you.

The sun to each other's sunflower

Dear ts,

"May we learn to be the sun to each other's sunflower"....

Amen. And beautifully said.

mrudzio

Azarin

Azarin,

thank you for your insightful comments, memories and thoughts. I always enjoy the gentle, indirect way you express yourself.

I agree with you about free choice. I think the extent of individual human freedom is greatly exaggerated.

Anyone who has practiced meditation (for even a short time) soon realizes that he has very little control over his own thoughts (let alone his actions). Thoughts and images seem to bloom without any conscious intervention. It’s difficult to hold a single thought, image or intention for more than a minute or two. And “our own thoughts” are not felt to be our own creations at all. They seem to possess a life of their own.

Control over our own minds is small. Even though we feel we are masters of ourselves, close examination teaches us otherwise. Life appears to be poured into us from outside, or from deep within us (which really amounts to the same thing).

So I agree with you. Fate. Destiny. “Maybe after all, it's impossible not to fall in love with the Sun!” (A great sentence!)

Mrudzio, thank you

I love not so much the sunflower and its master but the sunflower and its teacher.  The fact that the sunflower follows the sun all day and that it also resembles it is so powerful.  

I had never put the two together, I am blown away!  

To Learn From Nature

Another wonderful piece. Your writing is so simple and beautiful. My guess is that your character is the same.
May we learn to be the sun to each other's sunflower and learn to follow nature's rythm unhampered by social conventions.

Dear mrudzio,

Dear mrudzio,

Voila another stunning piece from my favorite IC writer! You made me change my mind about the real meaning of one of my childhood myths!

During summer we used to go to Astara where my grandparents lived. Father liked to take many short tea breaks alongside the road…once we stopped by an endless yellow sunflower field. I remember walking closely by those flowers, which stared the sun. All of them, except a few that didn’t.

I always liked to think they were the rebellious flowers not following the rules, even if Father had corrected me that they were just dead flowers!

Dead or rebellious, we ended up taking out their moist seeds…Of course, it wasn’t as good as the seeds that Grandpa used to offer me each time he came back from work.

When I was seven years old, Grandpa passed away and we went to Astara for the mourning ceremonies. They didn’t let children to attend the funeral, but instead we went to a park and adults gave each kid a bag of goodies, a bag similar to the one grandpa used to hide in his pocket; a cone made with newspaper and filled with toasted and salty sunflower seeds.

Somehow my memories of Astara, that road trip, those dead sunflowers and my dead grandpa are all mixed up…  

Reading your beautifully written piece about your desperate search (even your justification) to find a poetic meaning in the natural cycle of plants’ existence, took me back to my own wondering in that park, while I was cracking those delicious seeds, playing and screaming like a rebellious lunatic, not missing Grandpa…still in denial, far, far from a deep sense of grief.

Your piece made me reconsider this story, that I wsan't that rebellious, that I couldn't escape the natural cycle of things. That it was my way of dealing with death...that maybe after all, it's impossible not to fall in love with the Sun!

Thanks for sharing!

Azarin

Dear mrudzio, nature is

Dear mrudzio, nature is poetic and by writing about nature you made it sensuous.  But it was not just writing about nature, your writeup to me was not just technical.  To you it may have looked more technical since you talked about Botanists and researched philosophy. As far as that poem, it is going to take some time.  My lines of poem are now just ideas and nothing on paper.  My original inspiration was light rain but maybe because of your article, I can add other elements of nature to it too.  Sorry for getting ahead of myself.

Sensuous

Dear ana101,

how strange (and wonderful)! Because I didn’t intend this article to be “sensuous” or artistic in any way. Indeed, I thought of it as being a fairly prosaic piece, even “technical” in nature.

So I’m intrigued now, and would love to read the poem once it’s written.
Please post it. Soon.

Thank you for writing,

mrudzio

This is such a sensuous

This is such a sensuous article. So fitting to my mood right now. This morning I had to get up early.  Later, as I was walking in the gentle rain, I was inspired by its poetry.  I have not written it yet but the light rain was really poetic even to me.  I am usually not that nature loving but this was a rain that its gentleness practically seduced me. 

Frustrated desire

Dear Azadeh,

frustrated Desire, then, must have some kind of value. For if the sunflower achieved its wish of immediate union with its “beloved”, perhaps we would not have its beauty to enjoy (born out of interminable longing).

The young maiden becomes ever more beautiful (and desirable) as a direct result of her desire, preparing herself for her “beloved” with whom she can never be united, but whose love draws her ever closer……..(Being "in love" makes us more "lovely").

Most of us (I believe) desire to be desired. And underneath all our doubts, some deep part of us is certain of our desirability. To “be”, is to be desirable (I think).

Many Thanks,

mrudzio

Very interesting

Thank you so much for this wonderful work. Seeking explanations that satisfy us emotionally is the best approach. Science sometimes satisfies our minds but rarely does our hearts.

William Blake has a poem named "Ah Sunflower" whose meaning or my interpretation of it satisfies my poetic curiosity about the movements of the sunflower. For him, the sunflower is unable to fulfil its desire to be with the sun.

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

The sunflower is used as a powerful symbol of desire. According to a Greek legend, the sunflower was created when a woman "pined away with desire" after the Sun God and was consequently turned into a sunflower and followed the movements of the sun throughout the day.  Just as the sunflower is unable to fulfil its desire to be with the sun, so is the virginal youth unable to act on her desires because of restrictions in her society. The Virgin is "pale" and "shrouded" suggesting tones of death. Her desires have been buried for her and her life will only be half lived.

I know, Proclus's vision is much more positive and attractive; but Blake's is much more tragic, which is my thing :-).

Cheers,

Azadeh