Posted By crates on October 4, 2007

Every May when the large rhododendron by the driveway begins to bloom, eventually producing this incredibly lovely display of pink blossoms that cover the entire plant, I begin to feel this tension. As I drive out every morning I stop and roll down my car window and look at the exquisite details in the pink flowers–the stamens, the pistil, the small brown speckles in the throat of the flower. At night when I return they seem to glow in the darkness welcoming me home.

And yet at the very height of the blooming period, I begin to experience a curious feeling of delight and apprehension. When I first felt this tension upon viewing the flowers, I was confused as to its origin. Why should I experience this sensation? Then as the blooming period reached its zenith and the flowers begin to turn brown and fall about the base of the huge plant, I understood. As I gazed on the brown withered blossoms clinging to the plant and strewn about the ground, I knew that the sweet, exquisite loveliness of the blossoms was transient, fleeting, and that soon they would wither and die. The presence of such exuberant life in sharp juxtaposition with decay and death produced this tension in me–produced a mixture of sweet melancholy and joy at the same time.

Upon reflection I realize that I have often had this particular feeling throughout my life. I remember once looking at the hand of a girl that I was holding. Moonlight shown down on us, and as I looked at her hand in mine, I thought of the beauty of the smooth flesh and how soon it would in the not too distant future become wrinkled and old before it eventually turned to dust. I became filled with a sense of how transient life was and a sadness filled me. “Bones,” I muttered which caused her to jerk her hand back in surprise.

I felt the same emotion reading war time letters from my father to his family and looking at photographs of him and my mother during that turbulent time. I felt it especially strong looking at photographs of my father and his best friend. They had grown up together in a small Texas town, gone to the same schools, played football on the same team. This friend had a car and would carry my father and my mother about during their courtship. They both had graduated on a Friday and both went into the military service on Monday–my father into the Army-Airforce, and his best friend into the Marines. I used to look at their picture together standing in front of my father’s house with their arms on each other’s shoulders —two young men with all their lives ahead of them.  My father lived through the war and now has children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and is still alive and healthy today at age eighty-three. His friend? He died a hero’s death at Iwo Jima and was awarded the Navy Cross. He lies in the black sands of that bloody island far from the dusty west Texas town in which he grew up.  Youth, promise…transience…

There were many other times that I felt this melancholy, this sadness, and I was surprised to learn that the Japanese had already recognized this emotion centuries ago and had even applied a term to it: “mono no aware” (AH-wah-reh, three syllables, with the accent on the first). “The phrase is derived from the word aware, which in Heian Japan meant sensitivity or sadness, and the word mono, meaning things, and describes beauty as an awareness of the transience of all things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.” This sense of the precariousness of life and the certainty of its passing permeates Japanese art, poetry, music and religion.

4October2007, 9:37 pm

Categories: Japanese Poetry, People, Personal Stuff, Philosophy/Religion
Tags: a sense of the transience of all things, mono no aware