Ghairo Daniels : Healings, Writings, Crafts : From the Soul to the Heart: ARUM LILIES IN KNYSNA : (Life is just beginning series : Episode 8)

LIFE IS JUST BEGINNING EPISODE 8 : ARUM LILIES IN KNYSNA

It is challenging to describe the Arum Lily. The closest I come to finding an exact description is magnetically PURE. It draws one – into its wildness. A single snowy white receptacle, on a single straight stem with a strong yellow heavily powdered pistil growing in a field surrounded by weeds somehow gives one a sense that all of life is pure, that life is magnetic – that its ebbs, flows, dips, raises is inherent to its intrinsic beauty.Endlessly changing, yet changeless.

Then there are those Arums growing in groups out of dungheaps, peeping magnetically through tall forest trees. “Come to us. See how we live and fade away only to be reborn next spring. Here are fairies resting against the base of our stems. They drink dew drops from our elephant leaves. We challenge you to be wild and free….”

In Knysna, Arums pop up everywhere this time of year – along busy roads, next to ponds, at the edge of manicured gardens, along cultivate fields of herbs, in big strong hands of hungry flower –pickers who tread the back paths of green ferny dens on this tip of the African continent.

Arum lilies always seem to juxtapose themselves making appearances in unexpected places, next to unexpected connections. An arum lily seen from my flat window stands singularly erect, its sharp pointed tip pointing in the direction of round Water lily leaves. The pointing makes the roundedness of Water Lily more openly fat, more giving and inviting. Arum Lily supports its kingdom. It stands in the middle of delicate peach reed florets, its strength apparent, an unchallenged leader.

Then walking down the street, behind a barbed partly rusted hospital fence, one glared defiantly at me, saying, “ Look, I’m behind bars, but I’m emerging in full bloom, fresh, white, hard. How the whiteness of Arum Lily transforms as it moves back into Earth is fascinating. From snow white leathery thickness to a creamy white, slowly wrinkling into light brown transparency. The pistil becomes soft and mushy, now most of its pollen has been dispersed in some way or the other. It starts drying out.

How much like the human. We disperse our bounties, dry out, gather wrinkles, but instead of seeing this as beauty in another form, we often regret middle age, our maturing selves, desperately trying to retain that which has to change, that which is a natural part of an inherent unfolding, unflinching cycle.

I was playing taxi woman to my daughter, waiting outside the orthodontist where she was having a different coloured set of braces fitted, like many crazy teens and I, like an outsider, had not the opportunity to sit in a dentist chair for many years, momentarily felt a wave of slavish resentment, cooped in a broken down car, waiting to taxi her to her next appointment, her art lesson. I was about to think the thought “Spoilt brat”, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A massive glorious Arum Lily, primly, lovingly, in a teeny weeny patch of sand outside the orthodontist stoep, winking at me, whispering, “Circumstances matter not. Life is just beginning. “! I smiled at Arum. My spirit soared and danced with its Consciousness of Beingness. Life did indeed just begin.