Me and the tulips, have always been close... I believe I was born with them in my soul. Or perhaps it was their abundance in spring, in my paternal grandfather's garden, that awakened this precious connection to "consciousness."
In the art of rhetoric, Aristotle spoke of three fundamental qualities in developing persuasive discourse: ethos, logos, and pathos. ...if I were to translate them into the world of flowers, I argue that the tulip possesses all three.
It is a model that does honor to flourishing rhetoric.
It persuades you effortlessly not to pass by indifferent.
It has an upright, seductive attitude, slowly opening its cup in the rhythm of the great celestial body, adeptly managing each stage, accompanied by generous and benevolent gestures. It evokes emotion through carefully crafted attire, with few details that always flatter its silhouette, yet never boring or dull, as it chooses vibrant colors and elegant details. The ones I knew were delicately fragrant, had a unique essence of their own, and a skin with a gentle, sensual touch.
As I moved around, perception showed me grace and style.
The Tulipa genus indeed has a refined nature.
One of its species, Semper Augustus, an extremely rare tulip, managed to earn the title of the most expensive flower, the "queen of tulips." In the 17th century, its purchase price was enough to buy a large house on the most beautiful canal in Amsterdam.
It triggered a true tulip mania, which seems to have peaked in February 1637, at the onset of the first economic crisis.
In its dialogue with the world, Semper Augustus weakened its personal power, placing its aesthetic accents in the hands of a virus.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a long-lived tandem. Dutch researchers in the 1920s discovered this virus, naming it TBV or "Tulip Breaking Virus," the virus that deteriorates the uniform color of tulips.
With each subsequent generation, the bulbs were increasingly degraded by the virus until, one day, they became too weak to bloom, and the genetic line died out.
Today, I can easily "revive" them in letters and poetry, those from my childhood: "for only when I dress in a TULIP does the night hide in my thighs":
”Trans woman, trans woman -
Relative like a dance step,
Blue bear at the nose (lost in shadow, can, can't)
White hydrangeas, only two,
Draped smoke, like dew...
Star woman, star woman,
Cold and clear and mean,
Only when you dress in a tulip
Does the night hide in your thighs...
Trans woman, trans woman -
Lucid in the final balance,
Dreamt leaf of a horse,
With the banal whinnying,
Sentimental harness...
Traveling chest woman,
Hastily forgotten on a ship, doesn't make
The same suspenseful dictionary-suspense:
Trans woman, trans woman...
Mihaela Grădinariu
Just a few days ago, I received from my dear friend Maria, from across the ocean, a bunch of images, with an artistic tulip, extremely expressive, impactful, just as she is, actually:
A caring message accompanied it... the trans-atlantic message with a monosemantic thought:
"now our tulips have found each other"
Yet beauty remains forever in the eyes of the beholder!
The tulip pictures are Maria's inspiration!
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