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22, flowers and genitals

chingching

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Have you ever been bewitched by flowers?

In early spring I watched a bouquet of tulips and anemones unfold slowly over two weeks, I've never before been so captivated by flowers, so entranced by their beauty. I even made an attempt to help them pollinate, pretended I was a bee (the lockdowns, while no longer in action, have indeed left their mark on my being). I watched an old documentary on plants around the same time which explained how plant's brains can be seen as being in their roots and so they are upside down compared to us, with their heads in the ground and their bottoms in the air, and even though I know well about the stamen and pistil, I just had never quite thought about it in that way, that the beautiful tulips on my coffee table were genitals slowly undressing in the air.

Flowers are the grace and decoration of the plant, they draw us in, to the point where whole financial markets were created around them. And in us, our floral parts too have this attractive quality, for some felt more through energy then gazed at, but, you know some like to gaze. There's a lady in this town here who only paints women's genitals, and on very large canvasses, very very large, wall to ceiling.

It casts the lines of 22 in an interesting light. Women can definitely have beards and lend grace to them, and this wouldn't be vanity exclusively, but would simply make the destination inviting.

White horses could be insects, bees, moths or whichever critters are not stealing the pollen but are transporting it to the right destination. I've appreciated 'horses', and as I'm now hitting mid life I guess I'll come across some white ones eventually.

Moist...

Maybe the first line describes the sublimation of genitals to foot fetishes,

Or at five, in a whole group, a small bundle might be distressing but comparison cannot overcome beauty, and size doesn't alter beauty's effect. It's allllll good stuff.

And the last line, like the dying flower in my pic below, where all the petals are going but the genitals of the flower remain, completely bare and about to die or create the seed of a new life, and, still beautiful, with impressive grace in their unsheltered vulnerability.

( extra thought for line 3, how the tulip closes its petals at night to protect its genitals and opens them up in the sunlight, each day becoming more open until it can't close its petals at night anymore.)

;)

IMG_20220225_095143150_HDR.jpg IMG_20220225_110622395_HDR.jpg IMG_20220225_110725705_HDR.jpg IMG_20220227_114225144_HDR.jpg IMG_20220303_095458436.jpg
 

hilary

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Rilke, Sonette an Orpheus:

Blumenmuskel, der der Anemone
Wiesenmorgen nach und nach erschließt,
bis in ihren Schooß das polyphone
Licht der lauten Himmel sich ergießt,

in den stillen Blütenstern gespannter
Muskel des unendlichen Empfangs,
manchmal so von Fülle übermannter,
daß der Ruhewink des Untergangs

kaum vermag die weitzurückgeschnellten
Blatterränder dir zurückzugeben:
du, Entschluß und Kraft von wieviel Welten!

Wir, Gewaltsamen, wir währen länger.
Aber wann, in welchem aller Leben,
sind wir endlich offen und Empfänger?

Braver people than I am have tried to translate this, here
and here
 

charly

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Hi Chingching:

Glad to see you.
Not about chinese poetry but maybe almost universal :Forbidden Fruit at Academia.edu
May you enjoy it.

All the best,

Charly
Ronald A. Veenker
«Sexual Fruit Metaphors
The universality of sexual fruit metaphors may be linked to the intrinsic sexuality of fruit itself. Fruit is the reproductive part of the plant — its sexual organs.

Fruit is . . . very colorful and shaped so that it is readily differentiated from foliage. It is attractive to the eye, and tempts one to approach and touch it. Fruit exudes an appealing fragrance, especially strong and irresistible when it is very ripe. Fruit makes an ideal metaphor for sex because the two have quite similar sensual attributes. The sex organs are irregular in shape in comparison to other body parts. They increase in size and change
color during sexual arousal, making them more attractive. The odors of the vaginal and seminal fluids also serve to attract and arouse. And the juiciness of both fruit and pudenda is obvious. ²

When we humans unlocked the secrets of botanical reproduction and fertility and began effective plant domestication, these metaphors appeared in the human lexicon ; they are, therefore, present in the world’ s most contemporary as well as its most ancient literature. For example, the mandrake is commonly associated with fertility and is thought to be an aphrodisiac because its roots resemble both male and female genitals. ³

The fig, which is also seen as both male and female, is a fruit often associated with sexual images. ⁴ Fruit metaphors and related images taken from the world of gardens abound in the English poets from Lawrence to Chaucer, in the works of Europeans in all periods, and in the literature of classical Greece and Rome.
»

Quoted from:
Forbidden Fruit : Ancient Near Eastern Sexual Metaphors
Ronald A. Veenker. Western Kentucky University.
Complete article available at www. Academia.edu in full text pdf format.
Maybe you will need registration wich can be cost free.

Ch.
 

charly

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... Flowers are the grace and decoration of the plant, they draw us in, to the point where whole financial markets were created around them. And in us, our floral parts too have this attractive quality, for some felt more through energy then gazed at, but, you know some like to gaze. There's a lady in this town here who only paints women's genitals, and on very large canvasses, very very large, wall to ceiling.

It casts the lines of 22 in an interesting light. Women can definitely have beards and lend grace to them, and this wouldn't be vanity exclusively, but would simply make the destination inviting...
Hi Chingching:

In chinese the title of H.22 is a character that depicts FLOWER IN A VASE, meaning TO ADORN, TO HONOR, that W/B translated GRACE. Its phonetic ,BI, sounds almost like another characters meaning «female external genitalia»

I always believed that 22.2 meant «HONORING ONE'S BEARD» in the sense of «if you have entered into adulthood, beehave like an adult. Behave properly»

Of course that some associations can turn the idea a little disturbing. Do women have BEARD like men? Yes if one takes BEARD in figurative sense: PUBIC HAIR. But that's another story.

People who feel disconfortable may prefer to think that BEARD is but the protograph of a character meaning ELDER SISTER. Honor your elder sister. But not for all, some people has not elder sister.

All the best,

Charly
______________________
P.D.:
bi4 bright
bi1 vagina (vulgar)
bi1 old variant of 屄[bi1]
bi1 euphemistic variant of 屄[bi1]
bi1 to force (sb to do sth) / to compel / to press for / to extort / to press on towards / to press up to / to
close in on / euphemistic variant of 屄[bi1]
[from MBDG.NET]

Ch.
 
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charly

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Hi Chingching:

In chinese the title of H.22 is a character that depicts FLOWER IN A VASE, meaning TO ADORN, TO HONOR, that W/B translated GRACE. Its phonetic ,BI, sounds almost like another characters meaning «female external genitalia»
...
Hi Chingching:

Where are you? Could you reply with your opinions? I feel quite lonely here speaking to nobody.

About the composition of the hexagram chinese title:

賁 bi4 bright, adorn, honoring the signs of what we are, grace (W/B).

... upper 卉 hui4 FLOWERS (meaning women) or BLOSSOMS (young, unmarried or virgins) or SPROUTS (meaning men)

... lower component: 貝 bei4 STRUNG COWRIE SHELLS, Used as money since the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Often said to look like female external genitalia, signifying maybe FERTILITY or predominance of the YIN principle. In Zhouyi, a parallel with STRUNG PIERCED FISH meaning CONCUBINES led in rows by the QUEEN, waiting for being favored by the KING in the Gao Mei fertility rite.

Many people don't believe that ancient chinese people had such sexual connotation in mind. Nobody's perfect!

That's enough for now.

All the best,

Charly
 
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charly

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.... lower component: 貝 bei4 STRUNG COWRIE SHELLS, Used as money since the Shang and Zhou dynasties. ...
Cowrie shells used as MONEY:

Currency​

Genuine cowry shells (bei 貝), traded through southwest China from the Indian Ocean, or bronze imitates of such shells (tongbei 銅貝), was a kind of currency inherited from the Shang period. Yet the average number of shells of individual tombs was low in comparison with the Shang period—even if some graves of the Western Zhou period like a series of tombs of the state of Wei 衛 (Xincun 辛村 near Junxian 濬縣, Henan) included several thousand cowries.

Inscriptions of bronze vessels show that the presentation of cowries by the king to regional rulers or by the latter to their functionaries was a kind of reward for services, in numbers of a few peng 朋 (perhaps "double-string") per person. How many shells a peng included, is under debate, and the arguments range from 2 shells per peng to 10 or even 200 (Zhou 2000: 954). 5 shells might have constituted a string (xi 系), and two strings a double-string (peng), as the scholar Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877-1927) explained. Bronze cowries were measured in the unit lüe 鋝 (usually written 寽 or {貝+寽, in the Shiji 史記 written 率}, also interpreted as huan 爰 or 鍰, or with the jade radical 瑗), which is also used for a word for 'currency' written like {山/王/貝} (perhaps an early form of 貨, 責, or 賃; Deng 2017).
...
Source: Chinaknowledge

Ch.
 

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