ikebana

Her thoughts were like Cut Flowers.

Ikebana is the art of beautifully arranging cut stems, leaves, and flowers in vases and other containers that evolved in Japan over seven centuries. It originated when Buddhist priests offered up flowers before Buddha. The Japanese believe Ikebana speaks directly to the heart of the creator and the viewer. It is sculpture that breathes and expresses stability and the spirit of Nature, a link to the whole universe. The flower bud contains, for instance, the energy force of life towards the future.

More than just putting flowers together, Ikebana philosophy is to bring the nature and humanity together.It is a art form in which the arrangement is a living thing which helps in developing a closeness with nature.

Two hundred years ago Flower Arrangement was considered one of the accomplishments of an Edo samurai.

Beauty is not enough. It needs context.

Near Piazza Navona is the Mario Praz Museum. It was originally the home of Praz (Rome 1896 - 1982), an Anglicist and art critic, who lived there the last 40 years of his life. More that a home, it was a container for his various collections.

Praz , in FIORI FRESCHI, writes about how the agony of cut flowers is prolonged by being immersed in water and how their moribond state is sometimes extended by those who insist upon putting aspirin in their water. Praz makes one feel as if the only justifiable cut flowers are those in Still Lifes. Praz refers to cut flower as creatures decapitated by cruel scissors that maintain the aspect of freshness just as human bodies do when buried in Polar ice. As if flowers that are never cut never die.

By the sheer fact that they're selected to be cut, Cut Flowers are given importance. Their life may be shorter but at least it's more intense. Unfortunately many flowers, like many women, bloom and wilt in total oblivion.

Men inhabit their homes. Women live in them. Had Praz had a woman instead of having lived 40 years alone, he might have had a better appreciation for Cut Flowers.

Women are like flowers. First they're picked then they wilt and fade away.

Have you ever read Dumas' THE LADY OF THE CAMILLAS? Where Marguerite says: If a woman could know at 20 what she knows at 40, she'd live her life totally differently. Well, it's true. Only it's a wasted piece of truth because knowing it does a woman no good at all because there's no way you can know what you know at 40 without first turning 40.