winterlinge

they are the first flowers to appear here. so tiny that when you see them, you think, piece of yellow plastic, dropped by the wind, right next to the sleeping roses. you kneel down to pick it up, and it's only then that you understand: flower. not plastic. still you wonder how this little bundle of life is able to do this, to lift itself out of the half-frozen earth, to unfold tiny green leafs, and then raise its yellow head even before the calendar says february.

smile. and camera shy they are. didn't like their picture to be taken. then, when i finally got a good angle, the camera shut down. recharge battery, it said. still, this hazy photo is reflecting the magic of those flowers and also their name: winterlinge, they are called. winter-lings. like figures out of a fairy tale.

Tinted Dust

Through the course of a Chinese evening ransacked by worries of the mind and pillaged by doubters of the present, I realised there is something missing in my life right now - Flowers.

Flowers to sweep aside the dust of the past and salvage the colours of today.

The city of Xuchang, Henan is pretty but bare. The leaves barely cling to spindly trees. And the flowers? There just aren't any flowers. On some days, the dry loess wind rips the leaves off, which then lie asunder on the streets. Dust filters through the air, your thoughts and the tiniest pore of your being.

And my flowers. Where can they grow here? How can they grow here? Or is it perhaps just the off -season? But my mind tells me it can't just be winter, there were no flowers here even in September. Perhaps spring, if I am still here, might reward me with a few colours but for now my eye can only see what my mind can invent. The rest are a blur of grays and browns tinted in dust.