—In Memory of My Strange Homeland
“Thirty years ago, you looked at me from the tips of the willow branches. I was young then; you were round, and so were the people. Thirty years later, I look at you from the tips of the willow branches. You are a cup of wine the color of home; you are full, and homesickness too is full.”
—Shulan
You said the crabapple blossoms on campus were in full bloom, red and so beautiful they made one ache with tenderness. Yes, how beautiful, how beautiful those flowers are. Those shy flowers, those red flowers, make me think of the azaleas back home; they must be blooming just now too...
When spring passes like a train bristling with colored pencils, the earth turns bright crimson. Who knows which master splashed this ink, with strokes so vigorous and forceful, so wild and free, so spare and yet so full of lingering charm!
The azalea is not a flower, but a daughter suffused with a masculine spirit. Red as cinnabar, radiant as rosy clouds, surpassing even the blood-soaked setting sun; rouge congeals with tears and feeling softens a little, while a daughter’s tone carries meaning through and through. The red of winter plum is too aloof beside her; the red of young peach is too ordinary. She is neither as simple and stubborn as pomegranate red, nor as deep and aged as lychee red, still less as proud as rose red. In her redness there is a trace of whiteness, mingled with a wild innocence, fused with ardent purity, and touched by a classical tenderness. I have heard that peony red is beautiful too, but surely it cannot match her grace.
“A single distant gaze between the cliffs is the dream of your whole life.” What openness this is, what peace! The azalea is like a verse of Zen: “All beings bear the marks of suffering; only my Buddha wanders free.” I think Mahayana Buddhism ought to mean taking root in one’s own soil, with gratitude and forbearance in the heart. To act without contending; even when no one comes to look, year after year, the flowers bloom as before. What composure, what ease!
The azalea is born to bloom only in the wild. However desolate the mountain ridge, her lovely figure is always there. So long as she has put down roots, she blossoms with passion. Her leaf buds are sparse and open-hearted; her branches are graceful and full of feeling.
The vicissitudes of years, the marks left by time and space, can never diminish the least of her ardor. Long seasoned by wind, frost, snow, and rain, she still stands with head held high; even if the world dismisses her, she still smiles beautifully; let the other flowers scorn and crowd her out, she still blooms with spirit. What strength this is: the force of life, the force of living! Like a restless infant in its mother’s womb, like the sun on a mountain peak casting red light in every direction, she is filled with hope, rich in vitality and vigor. This true experience of life is so intimate and warm.
Thinking back to those years, my childhood companions were so like a flock of birds of paradise, playing upon her pink cheeks. Pluck a stem of azalea and tuck it into the hair, and they were just like a procession of brides—waiting to be wedded to Old Man Time, or to become God’s mistresses.
“As flowers fade and fly, filling the sky, who pities the vanished red, the severed fragrance?” Thinking of it now, Daiyu burying flowers was hardly worth mentioning. People seek sorrow and burden their own hearts; what is truly sad is human affairs, not flowers. Half a cup of cold wine does not dispel fragrance; a handful of warm earth remains for all ages. “Today I bury flowers and people laugh at my foolishness”—Sister Lin, too, was merely seeking sorrow and resentment without cause, a warning to later generations of tender feeling: do not imitate this woman’s form.
“The fair tree in the rear court,” “its writings splendid and bright”—my azalea is as beautiful as prose, and as deeply loved by me as prose. The flowers bloom on the farther shore; though I cannot pluck them, they will live forever in my heart...