The Hyperion Chronicles

the Hyperion Chronicles
“It’s like Butterscotch, Yo!”

#290 Softly Falling Petals

“And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, would scarcely notice that we were gone.”
- Sara Teasdale

I have this friend who used to swear that there is virtually no predisposed difference between men and women, and that social engineering was responsible for the way they turn out. I will readily admit that the collective consciousness drilled into little boys and little girls is as different as east is east and west is west (and never the twain shall meet)¹.

But I cannot buy the idea that there are no differences straight out of the gate (or womb, if you prefer). There are some things that no amount of training, social coercion, or environmental stimuli could ever make me understand.

One of these things is flowers.

I have found that many—I dare say even most—girls like flowers. I wish flowers no specific harm, but other than that, don’t think about them much one way or another. My sister was recently in a play, and as is the manner of such things, received flowers after several of the performances.

This seems wasteful. If I were going to receive a gift, I would want something more durable and permanent, like a really cool space pen that writes upside down and underwater. Or, if disposable gifts were protocol, I would think something more practical would be better, like a bouquet of beef jerky. (This right here illustrates the difference between men and women. Most girls are right now rolling their eyes, whereas I bet most guys are thinking, “That would be so cool!”) I suppose I should just be happy that people are giving my sister flowers rather than taking them away. (And somewhere, a nightclub drummer goes Buh-DUM-Tchhhh.)

However, lately I have been looking at flowers. Specifically, my sister’s, because Jeez, they’re everywhere. Like white people at the Gap, I bump into flowers every time I turn around. So, I have been looking at them.

I still maintain that no matter how beautiful the flowers may or may not be (which, I suppose, much like Julie Andrews, is in the eye of the beholder), they are still a stupid gift, for the primary reason that they die quicker than me trying to play Super Contra (although that’s because I was terrible, but you get the idea). These flowers sit there, cut like Martha instructed at an angle, in water with a little packet of something or other that comes with it (I am wholly unconvinced this is not an air-borne virus designed to make women want more flowers, but that’s another show), and the flowers just die.

I suppose if there’s anything dumber than flowers that are going to die right away, it’s someone watching them die, and yet I found myself transfixed, wondering which petal would fall next. Maybe it’s because that song was on the stereo about meeting in September² (it always puts me in a weird mood), but watching these flowers die reminded me of the Bradbury story There Shall Come Soft Rains³. It’s a dreary story in some ways, but beautifully poetic at the same time.

I sat there, for who knows how long, watching these flowers. Over time you could actually see them blacken in places, and then, one by one, in some cosmic order that was never revealed to me, the petals would float to the floor below.

Maybe—and I haven’t asked—this is what the girls like: these softly falling petals as each one detaches itself from the life-giving plant-mother and gently breezes to its death. There is something very poignant about that. (At least, when you haven’t slept a lot, there is.) Maybe I like flowers after all, as long as they’re dying.

But I’d still rather have the jerky.

Hyperion
March 29, 2004

Notes
¹ This comes from a poem called The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling
² The song is Sealed With a Kiss
³ Bradbury’s story is in itself a reference to Sara Teasdale’s poem by the same name, which Bradbury includes in its entirety in his poem.

Credits
Thanks to my sister
Thanks to Aslan
Thanks to Sara Teasdale
Thanks to Ray Bradbury
Thanks to Paul Anka, and everyone else who recorded Sealed With a Kiss