the ikebana bouquet

why do we in the west display flowers so differently from the styles of japan? why do we have nothing resembling bonsai? given that all people are the same, why are we different?

why bonsai and ikebana in one land, and bursting armsfull in another? this is not a rhetorical question.

why ballet, why butoh? or shakespeare or kabuki or no?

what role does the alphabet play? i've suggested before that calligraphy led easily to a simplified, focused art, but what of western capitals? in their straight lines, power? aggression?

is it the tendency of one-goddedness that's developed in the west v. a more diffuse worship? a separation between god and man v. an incorporation of all in all?

could it be the scientific method? the knowledge that the earth orbited the sun? a sense that the earth can be ruled v. the sense that what is, is? the process v. the outcome?

it is suggested that ikebana started with the practice of giving flowers to the buddha. of bonsai, it is said, "With Japan's adoption of many cultural trademarks of China, bonsai was also taken up, introduced to Japan during the Kamakura period (1185 - 1333) by means of Zen Buddhism, which at this time was rapidly spreading around Asia.

The exact time is debatable, although it is possible that it had arrived in AD 1195 as there appears to be a reference to it in a Japanese scroll attributed to that period. Once bonsai was introduced into Japan, the art was refined to an extent not yet approached in China. Over time, the simple trees were not just confined to the Buddhist monks and their monasteries, but also later were introduced to be representative of the aristocracy as a symbol of prestige and honour.

The ideals and philosophy of bonsai were greatly changed over the years. For the Japanese, bonsai represents a fusion of strong ancient beliefs with the Eastern philosophies of the harmony between man, the soul and nature." 1

and though perhaps only charles rennie mackintosh painted flowers in a manner resembling those in the japanese culture (no accident there), certainly no one could suggest that an armful of wild flowers was any less an act of worship too.

why are there flowers?

i was in the large waiting room shared by two teams of doctors and a testing lab, reading in a ten year old issue of natural history magazine an article entitled 'why are there flowers?'; the answer, which the magazine clearly thought would shock its readers, was quite obviously sex.

as it is, perhaps, for us humans as well. is it any wonder that we all, men and women alike, admire being, and/or seeing, the flowers? and when the hormones are flooding, we women often feel it of ourselves too: the lightness of purpose and the dance of life.

but most of us women know, or learn sooner or later, that that's not it; gender falls away in the face of substance. we are all quite more, men and women again alike, than the pursuit of the sum of our parts. (i remember suddenly realizing, at the age of three, that all the songs on the radio were love songs. how absurd! i thought.)

that's why when i come across an image of a woman who is not being portrayed for her loveliness first and foremost, it catches my attention. images of women who are thinking of something, who are complex, who have more knowledge than they are expected to have, sadly, often fall into the categories of dejection or exhaustion. but wait -- is there a glimmer more?

Each cell has a life. There is enough here to please a nation. It is enough that the populace own these goods. Any person, any commonwealth would say of it, “It is good this year that we may plant again and think forward to a harvest. A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”

Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collecting, one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona, one is straddling a cello in Russia,

one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt, one is painting her bedroom walls moon color, one is dying but remembering a breakfast, one is stretching on her mat in Thailand, one is wiping the ass of her child, one is staring out the window of a train

in the middle of Wyoming and one is anywhere and some are everywhere and all seem to be singing, although some can not sing a note.

Anne Sexton from “In Celebration of My Uterus” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981