Tiger Lilies

Disclaimer: This is not the post you guys were waiting for. I just decided to post this so I can buy a little more time for the other one! 🙂 Enjoy. It was for lit.

A step (with a 5x optical zoom-in) closer and I have it captured. Drops of water and its own signature dark spots alternately freckle each petal, selectively, capriciously even. The lucid liquid magnifies an orange vibrance that lies, eclipsed, beneath. Stabilizing my Macro-enabled shot against my chest, I continue to photograph rapidly and desperately, hoping to bottle up this beauty safely within my treasures. Releasing the lily from my grasp, I allow it to spring back into a large bundle with the others. The sweeping movement triggers a release of the musky, lascivious fragrance that can paradoxically be equated with the unseasoned chastity of a lawn after lightning and the sudoric stickiness of afternoon sex, simultaneously.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you pink roses,” he says, his voice more monotonous than apologetic. I accept the plastic-wrapped lilies graciously, imagining in their place stems of my classic, conventional pick: smooth baby fingers, wrapped by layers upon folded layers of blushing satin. I lift the bouquet to my face, fully conscious of the disarming, subjugating effect of the bright color against the faded neutrality of a human girl. While the pink roses could subtly intensify the rouged tones of my cheeks and lips, my tiger lilies only defraud me of any limelight, drenching me in a drabness so lonely and depressing I am tempted to pitch both him and his flowers out the window.

It is remarkable how even insignificant things become monumentous when they fail to work out. If something so trivial cannot go according to plan, what hope is there for what actually matters to you? You have long since surrendered your fate to an external power, but every obstacle in your path, every single trial and tribulation, translates in your mind to a divine abuse of privilege. Dissatisfaction with “the little things in life” strips us from our grip on what is certain, and throws everything out of proportion. But understandably so!

Just imagine. Your eyelids are resisting yet your willpower keeps persisting. Nighttime blurs your vision but heightens other sensations. Tonight precedes the new moon—the final night of rippling dark before the waxing crescent scars the blackness above, and with telescope in hand, you are prepared to revel in the concealed wonders that nature offers you while the less-elite are tucked in bed. But you, city girl in your city world, are in for some disappointment. Did you really think your world of packaged produce and earthquake-proof high rises was insurance enough to provide you with the “best of both worlds?” It’s pollution, love. You have just been cheated out of glimpsing a single diamond in the sky. Fold up that telescope, dust your disappointment under the carpet, and thank you, come again.

But it is only then that you learn to appreciate the intermittently blinking lights on passing airplanes overhead. You find comfort in the tranquility and silence, and feel refreshed by the absence of predictability in the draft that blankets your unacquainted skin. Incomparably wonderful, yet to a comparable extent.

With this in mind, I wave good-bye, rap the door in place, and separate a single lily from the cut-glass vase. The petals open up to greet me in a way that a rose will never quite accomplish. And the way it remains animated, no, electrifying, in spite of the myriad of dotted imperfections along its body, is truly commendable. In fact, by exuding such a strong character, the tiger lily is able to counteract its own flaws and transform them into distinguishing characteristics of something simple and beautiful. It is only then that I see just how intimately my own personal identity is wrapped within a flower that I never before gave a second glance.

Orange. Safety cones that designate the right pathway to walk to school. Security,  protection. The glowing lights inside the street lamps that power my city at night. Luminescence. Direction. The center stripe of candy corn, the signature treat of the holiday of my birth month—harvest and revelry.  A stretch of sand reflecting the ardent amber of sunrise. Revival. Recovery. And each individual poppy seed that peppers the orange vividness—delicate, yet purposeful—emanates an unconventional grace. How can my tiger lily enclose everything I value inside its tiny petals?

And if I fail to immediately recognize the unique value of my tiger lily, only I myself would stand to lose anything. The lovely flower will doubtlessly parch and perish within days, and its ephemeral charm will vanish from my living room forever. For now? I can try to hold on to it, seize each minute detail and emblazon it both in my memory and on photo paper. But as long as I believe the tiger lily represents some fragment of my identity, I can let it go just as I let time pass me by and pray that by the end of it all I will have some solid memories to share.

5 comments May 27, 2009

it is written

Now that 2 people have come up to me in the same day to tell me that they found my blog, I have decided to write something meaningful. So please ignore the previous posts 🙂 k cool.

I was recently thinking about one of my favorite books, Paulo Coehlo’s “The Alchemist,” because I saw it lying on the floor in Mr. Anderson’s room. Reading it over the summer after eighth grade (probably the most significant turning point in my maturity), I remember thinking that it had effectively encompassed the most beautiful of life’s philosophies into a compact little novel, all set against the enthralling backdrop of Moorish Andalusia (Al Andalus) in the Middle Ages.

Its tagline is “A fable about following your dream.” This just sounds ridiculous to me. I mean, we hear this phrase so much and then the real world shatters our childhood dreams of combatting flames and saving kittens, floating amongst satellites and stars, or even weaving in and out of clouds in an airplane.

I think that a better description of the book (which was originally written in Spanish, I think—so maybe the follow your dreams thing was just translated badly and it wasn’t actually so cliche. I should look this up) would be “Trust your instincts.” Imagine how much more relaxed standardized testing would be if we were correct every time we put down our first guess. Without carefully reading each answer, the passage, or even the question.

And maybe that’s where the appeal of “Trust your instincts” lies, for me at least. It’s at once illogical, rash, and risky, and an exquisite falsehood that deceives you like Brer Rabbit. But Coelho’s idealism seems so fresh and separate from the disillusioned world we live in that the book instantly took me into a land where things were primal, less complicated, and so much more illuminated.

A lot of the novel deals with luck and its effect on our lives. If we believe that every aspect of our lives can be attributed to fate, and something “Maktub” by a higher power (not even necessarily God, for those of us as unreligious as I am), we have just relinquished control over our destinies.

But maybe that’s not a bad thing—we all know we make bad choices frequently, and even though we eventually learn from them, wouldn’t it be better if something tried and trusted drove the one thing most important to us? It’s much more comforting to know that no matter how many, severe, or frequent our lapses in judgment are, everything will always be okay. Even if this whole philosophy is wrong, believing things fall into place just makes me happier and better able to embrace or work around the challenges that life hits me on the head with.

I have always believed everything happens for a reason. It’s often unfair, painful, and difficult to live through at the time. Maybe even a long time. But when the sun sets, we are all able to acknowledge that it has shaped us and our future actions in ways we may never be aware of, and something good will have emerged from the darkness. And if we leave it all to luck, we can, with Santiago, follow the messages of the stars rather than speculate how they got there. We can forget about deciphering “the meaning of life,” and just start living.

14 comments March 17, 2009