Spring colors in Korea
Bits and pieces of the Korean culture
The morning chill has softened. The only heater we have in our house is no longer sought after. I’ve been spotting more women on campus in sleeveless tops and low-cut halters. People say spring is coming out of every nook and corner.
To me spring arrives with a trio of bright colors -- pinks, yellows, and whites. I sense the seasonal shift when pink azaleas blossom in the streets and hills, when yellow forsythias stretch out over fences, and when white magnolias flower on my university campus.
The warm feel of Brisbane’s air surely signals spring. But the verdure I see in front of me isn’t readily associated with spring. I need the blossoming color of spring to be sure that spring is indeed here. I dart glances here and there for the signs of spring I am familiar with while my husband is driving in the next seat. “There!” I shout at him. I think we have just passed a street full of spring colors. The street -- Valencia, it is called -- indeed is lined with trees I can’t name, but all in pinks and whites. I feel a lump in my throat. Yes, I now see the spring I used to know. It certainly is a spring.
A senior professor in Seoul sent me a letter with a picture of cosmos flowers pasted on the front page. How thoughtful and kind of her to make me remember that it is autumn, not spring, that has begun to creep into Korea. The cosmos, my favorite flower, starts to blossom as summer winds down. The tall cosmos with feathery leaves and thin eight-petaled flowers on long stems looks so fragile in the picture. Even in a little breeze, it sways. Perhaps it is the fragility I am attracted to. Or it may be the message the cosmos is delivering that the autumn foliage is about to come. I let my thoughts flow back to the last autumn I had a year ago in Korea. How I liked to walk in the vicinity of my apartment or on campus through the bulk of dancing cosmos in white, pale pink and rosy pink. When I felt tired, the big watercolor of cosmos flowers that hung in my office used to relieve me of that fatigue.
How wonderful to feel both spring and autumn at the same time!
(From Bits and Pieces of the Korean Culture, 2000)
계절이 우리와 반대인 호주에 1년간 안식년으로 있으면서 쓴 글입니다.
