3 martie 2021

Plants, patterns, labels, taxonomies, and people


The easiest way to sort out life is to use patterns and labels in order to put things into categories. Linnaeus brought order to human societies, by providing a system to label the plant and animal reigns.

Beautiful plants received structure, a way to look at them in such manner that one could go further into understanding their kinship. Purple, red, yellow and green became less important, and shapes, patterns, textures ruled the newly ordered kingdom. 

And it was good. One needs structure in order to fully discover beauty. 



However, the taxonomy is far from being enough to fully enjoy the stories of a plant. Shrubs, bushes, flowers have their own individual lives, way beyond the simple label that places them into a family. They adapt to environment to show the word the most amazing pictures, they survive in harsh conditions to bring joy to the eyes, they conquer deserted human landscapes, such as abandoned cities, to bring them real life, pulsing almost unknown, and blossoming in silence, reminding us the power of nature, the story behind the story, bringing unexpected happiness in places that were once supposed to die. 

Delicate stripes, intricate stems, funny shanks, and majestic haulms sketch an entire tableau, put on stage a show in which stunning flowers and promising buds play the role of stars. One may take a more careful look to stripes, petioles, laminas, or veins, to their unique ways in each plant, to the delicate story that amazes you like the most beautiful eyes that one can find in the person one loves. 

Because plants are like people. Taxonomy helps understanding their kind, but otherwise, they are unique, and show the careful viewer so many facets, that somehow they become overwhelming. 

And people developed in recent years their ability no be overwhelmed by the richness of emotions, facets, and variety of their own lives. 

As sociologists of postmodernity claim, this new world is so diverse, and allows us so much recompositing, so many rearrangements of the same apparently simple ‘reality’, that one needs a variety of perspectives to find the path from which she or he really grasps happiness. 

Plants also are sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes they seem noisy or even troublesome, sometimes they bring a calm mood. But they always find their way to express beauty. For themselves and for beholders. 

Like people. The key resides in the perspective, and in the capacity to accept them, as they accept us.

Simply putting them into categories does not help in this matter. Labels are just a way to simplify word, to give structure, but plants, and people, exist way beyond categories, they combine them in the most fantastic and atypic ways. Paraphrasing one of the obsessions from marketing, for some, normal is beautiful. For others, atypical is the is what is really wonderful. And a variety of stance stays in between. And one can grasp happiness from any of these stances. 

Atypical … Well, atypical may mean combining tumultuous noise with serenity, or joy and sadness, or various types of joy, or anything else, including romanticism and realism. Apparently, a plant is a given, it combines such nuances as a fact. But one can actually see it through various lenses, that it becomes in fact art, and can be whatever one wants to see it. 

When labeling them is not so strict, and leaves room for imagination, plants are always able to provide us with a new beginning. 

Like people. 

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