Thursday, October 12, 2017

A pinecone amongst roses

People value roses; the friendly yellow, the cheerful pink, the romantic red, the pure white.  Across cultures they are revered for their scent, color and shape.  Upheld as the ideal symbol of feminine beauty.  Also that our perceptions of beauty value the fresh and young, the budding bloom gradually unfolding to reveal its gifts to the world. 
Once a rose has fully emerged it has its season in the sun, then it loses its value.  Soon it is no longer fragrant, the brightness darkens and fades, and the lush petals fall away.  It matters not that the rose was selected to be cut and briefly enjoy fame in a vase or passed over to remain on the plant unselected, those blossoms will wither regardless.  When even the leaves are exhausted, you are left with only a stick of thorns.

I knew a young man who loved roses, and most of all was fascinated by the concept of a blue rose.  Blue roses do not exist in nature.  Breeders have produced mauve or burgundy roses and given them "Blue" in their name, but the bright blue roses are white roses that have been artificially dyed blue.  Like a simple elementary school science experiment, a white rose is cut and placed in water dyed with blue food coloring.  Once severed from the bush that bloom will expire, but not before it desperately drinks up the blue fluid that permeates the petals from tip to base, and stem and leaves along the vascular system.
I think sometimes on that the innocent white had to be manipulated with a chemical imposed upon it, just to be considered a unique and interesting aesthetic.  Was plain white too boring for you?
I wonder if that young man will be forever chasing the elusive... unattainable... novelty...

Behold the lowly pinecone.  Typically they're only noticed once the roses are done for the season, and only some fraction of the rose-lovers would see the beauty in a pinecone.  It has no vibrant hue, just brown.  The richness of wood brown, or maybe sunbleached-through-the-seasons grey.  It has no scent, at least nothing remarkable.  They're more common and simply grow uncultivated, and may even be an unsightly annoyance to be raked off the lawn and openly scorned as they fall with a thud onto the parked car.
But what about their gifts that they hold? Shouldn't that deserve celebration too?
They hold the potential of future forests, armouring the seeds within. Their thorns are but tiny prickles, slight yet unconcealed on scale tips, just for protection against those who would crush it in their hands.  Their shape has its own elegant symmetry and arrangement of scales the Fibonacci sequence, as roses do.  But unlike roses their shape has the strength of wood, and designed to not only withstand but respond to the elements.  They open when dry and close when wet, and will continue their function long after their seeds are dispersed, to diligently execute their duty and purpose.  They're resilient, still trying to open and close after being broken and disfigured by cars driving over them, they skitter off into the gutter.  They're tough, for as long as they can be.
They're beautiful in their own way.  Just different.