Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Narcissus

Narcissus, 7.5"x10" moku hanga--woodblock print. 2015

When I was in college, I shared an apartment for some time with a young woman who was working to help pay for her education. She worked in the local florists after school and she would bring home some days bunches and bunches of flowers that were a little too old to sell.  It was a good time in my life and the flowers of New England sat on the windowed kitchen in a Main street walk up.
The shelves would fill with Mason Jars and water glasses full of iris and daisies, tuberose and narcissus and we would enjoy the waning color and scent as the flowers slowly faded from a little tired to past withered.  We were bright and full of promise and so it wasn't very long before we had to leave that place and moment for other places and other things.

Thirty years later, I plant bulbs in patio pots and outside under the trees.  In the fields around us are nearly-wild double daffodils, tulips and nodding onions, narcissus, jonquils and hyacinth that will usually start to bloom in late winter or early spring.  And when they bloom, flags of color against the cold-tired fields of grass and mud, I am reminded of the waning flowers, and the kitchen, books and tea, and the woman I knew, and the distant promises we made, and sometimes kept, when we were flowers too.

9 comments:

  1. Nice print, Andrew, with a good story.

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  2. Terrific print Andrew! You capture the sort of tender floppiness that daffodils have, not sure if they should stand up straight or bend in an unexpected snow storm.

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  3. Beautiful image and a poignant story to go with it. I didn't know that you lived in New England in your younger days. Sending you New England vibes.

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    1. Thanks, Annie. I wasn't that far from your part of the world. I lived in Williamstown from 1980-1984. I saw my first apple trees, lilacs and sugar maples during my first year there (I grew up in Miami).

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    1. Thanks for stopping to read and comment, Katka. I hope to work on this a bit more.

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  5. Thanks, Sherrie, Elizabeth and Andrea...the earlier prints are a bit too high key/garish for the story behind it....the later ones I got dialed in with a little less pigment and a dulling glaze of orange. I plant flowers and tend a garden--both are already acts of faith and hope (and an offering to the gods and ancestors of past lives lived and not lived).

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  6. I nomi dei fiori in inglese sono splendidi

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