She had the Smell of Immortality

Well my pictures have been lying idle and i've been desperate to post. And it's about life. Well part of it. From youth to old age, lurking death and finally regeneration.  My reason may sound silly but i was getting no original words in my head to go with those pictures. All i was getting was songs i've heard before or poetry or perhaps even quotes. But no original thoughts. The only original thought that came to my mind was no one can really claim any thought to be original anymore. Mankind ever since it's inception has exhausted itself with all about life and somehow all we are doing is just rephrasing stuff. Perhaps something like bringing in stale coffee in a new mug. i can't use that old wine in a new bottle phrase because old wines are supposed to be better and i can't even claim mine to be an old wine.
 
So i kind of waited...let the already said and heard words flood me. Poor poor silly me... thought i might find a twig or something for myself from that deluge to save myself and drift ashore but alas!
As for the title of the post i was getting nothing original there too.

And just one more thing about my pictures. Looking at it i find nothing that has not been done before. At the moment i am struggling with ISO, SHUTTER SPEED and APERTURE...and clarity in my pictures is what i am looking for. So " Thinking out of the box'' is hardly there when i have to push that button.

Now for my story...or rather my thoughts...here i go...

When we look at a flower...and if we look at it as an entity the words that escapes is SHE...

i knew this had to happen one day. i knew i will not see her erect, manicured, immaculate as i had when she was in her prime but even bent with her poor skin and flesh which sort of was giving away she appeared beautiful to me. She still carried my favorite colors lilac and purple with grace. i looked down to see if i could have just a bit of her for keeps as i told her,'' Wish you could bless me to look as graceful..."

Then before i could gather what bit she had shed of her i sat there just next to her going through her memories. They were there in my camera. 

This is how she smiled at me day after day every day at a stretch any time every time i crossed her without batting an eyelid. Sometimes although swaying in some trance of her own when she was in conversation with her other friends, the birds, bees, butterflies and even the wind. How i loved to peer into those recesses, those folded petals as if they held some un revealed secret of hers. My nose almost touching her delicate petals. Did she like my smell i wonder. Cause i loved hers.

i bend down to pick up that piece of hers and i believe she dropped it on purpose, her gift to me. That part had all those hues that makes me go bonkers. She knew that perfectly well. i might have said that to her maybe a thousand times so much so that even the grasses would've heard and the soil too on which she grew and all the creatures out there...all of them would be sick and tired of my standard lines. i guess when not around they might be laughing as they mimicked me in chorus , "OMG i can drown myself in those colors...I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH..."

It seems like she is still there bend and low perhaps having her conversations with one and all but the fact of the matter is she is not visible to me anymore. The squall perhaps few days back took her away...somewhere. Not all of her but just a part of her and even if it hadn't she would've bid her farewell soon perhaps sooner than i could even anticipate. Nature's mystery you see is hard to predict. Now i look at her limbs and admire it for it's firmness. Still intact with some remnants of hers and that particular plumpness of hers rooted into the soil that hold all of her. She's still there. She is...

'' Death is more universal than life- everyone dies but not everyone lives."

Shed no tear-O, shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Weep no more- O, weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core.

-John Keats

Also the only quote i can really never forget from all the Economics that i learnt was by John Maynard Keynes and he said, '' In the long run we are all dead." but when you garden you are closest to this sense of immortality. There is this feeling of immortality associated with every death. You sense it more in your plants and in your garden. Thus in the long run life goes on and on.

My beautiful lilac cum lavender Dahlia did not know desolation and even in her decay she smelt of regeneration and that's why i loved her smell. 

Now i can understand why in all those eighteenth century gardens they would have an element of mortality in their compositions. Perhaps it was the purpose of the landscape designers to convey the idea of life itself which has these elements that my Dahlia showed me. In her bent form she tried to tell me that sometimes prettiness doesn't quite cut it. Something that is real must feel real look real and smell real. And one should see the beauty in the darker shades too as one finds joy in the sunny bright ones.  

The image that constantly lingers in my mind is thus-

Real, pretty and more poignant...