Wednesday
It stood pert in the mixture of lush green leaves and harsh spike foliage in front of the trellis. Soft yellow underwear with pink outer garments. It looked at me and I at it. So beautiful it sat there, so full of the splendour of life and living. So eagerly it thrust its face toward the world and the god of the Sun.
The rose was also a god, a god that warmed all that it cast its gaze on. What protocol should attend such a moment? Should it be revered and admired for not only what it is, but where it is, or should be it cut out and used to adorn a house, a foreign interior land? With great reverence I chose the latter course. I cut it about 10 inches down and took it inside where it would be admired by all.
And there it lives its adult life. As I write this it still looks at me and at me alone, for the Sun God is long gone for this rose. Its tight bud is now gorgeous and full flung; its petals are thrust outwards in luscious abandon. I love what it is and what it represents in the same manner that I love my own life. The two are inseparably intermingled.
There is creation, survival and destruction for all physical manifestations on this planet. We take our moment in the Sun and then we depart. If we have made the world a more beautiful, a more ordered, place then we have done our job, if we have failed, well, there is always another chance to come back and to do it properly.
The rose has done its job. It has filled my world with beauty and my existence this last week has been enhanced such that I struggle to find the words to describe it. My mood has been softened and bent before the awareness of that which is other than the self. The self is not understood by staring at the self, but by the love of and attention to outward beauty.
And soon, both the rose and I shall be gone. I do hope that I shall have performed half as well as the rose.