Sweet Potential
Not aware of the more complex processes that go into nature’s production of honey, four- or five-year-old me assumed that bees simply dug around the whorled center of flowers until they found hidden wells of nectar, which were somehow promptly deposited into the bear-shaped bottle in our family’s kitchen cupboard. Easily swayed by my insatiable sweet tooth and my inability to access that sticky, golden vessel, I decided to search for honey myself.
Honeycomb was just another box of cereal in the pantry; I didn’t know about hives and their queens and their workers. I only knew, vaguely, about flowers. I knew I didn’t like their scent, and was always puzzled by the bouquet-giving tendencies of those older than me. Flowers were for funerals and weddings, neither of which seemed all that relevant or interesting. These were occasions for the future, dozens and dozens of years ahead of me. The only gratification I could imagine receiving from flowers was their potential for sweetness. So, one day, I pinched my nose and decided to eat one.
There was a large flowering tree in the front yard of my Ahn-halmoni’s house. I ran my hand through its lowest branch and plucked a flower with tendrils of bright orange pollen. I placed one of these between my teeth, and pulled. I spat it out immediately. Embarrassed, I crushed what remained of the flower into the base of the tree and ran back to the house. The rest of the afternoon was spent tearing up strips of Airheads candy and pressing the pieces onto a glass-paned tabletop before placing them on my tongue. Later, I would sprinkle sugar all over a bowl of my favorite golden cereal.
These days I wonder at the use of edible flowers in decadent dessert recipes, and I’m not sure if I’d ever feel the same strong desire to try one of them. I’m slightly more cautious when it comes to eating things I’ve foraged for myself (which never happens anyway), but I suppose I’d be willing to taste a ridiculous petal-coated cake if someone were to offer me a slice. Sometimes, though, I wish I could tap into that uninhibited curiosity I had when I was young, capture a bit of that adventurousness and strangeness that I could hold close, as the dozens and dozens of years ahead of me that once seemed so distant become more real, more immediate.
Li-Young Lee’s poem, “From Blossoms,” reflects the kind of exhilaration I want to live out as often as I can, navigating each moment as if “from joy / to joy to joy … from blossom to blossom to / impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.” It is easy to fall into cycles of apathy and sameness, to be complacent in the familiarity of our established behaviors and preferences and insecurities. I’ve certainly found ways to shroud myself in layers of self-doubt over the past decade or so, which has inevitably warped into a kind of comfort. But there is little possibility of finding a “sweet impossible blossom” in this kind of environment; there may perhaps be a bit of peace and a vague sense of sanctuary, but this comes at the risk of encountering no growth, no bloom.
Flowers are familiar and safe. They provide moments of brightness to the more somber events of our lives, and they accentuate the beauty of the more joyous ones. Their ubiquity makes them both invisible and indispensible. I used to dislike the way a lot of flowers smelled, put off by their thick, lingering perfume. I have always admired their physical beauty, but recently I’ve started to appreciate what they offer as a fuller, more sensory experience. I hope to apply this kind of thinking in more aspects of my life, even if this means just learning how to be a little weirder, a little wilder. Blogging is hardly an adventurous undertaking, but I have always been a reluctant, self-deprecating writer. I hope to shed some of this reluctance through this space, allowing myself to make mistakes in order to grow as a writer, and maybe chew up a few more flowers if I have to. I’ll end up with some honey eventually, one way or another.