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Dedicated to Peach Blossom Spring

(Picture: comuseum.com)

(25.11.2022) I have not painted my personal Peach Blossom Spring yet, but I am telling my personal fable here, inspired by the timeless fable by Chinese poet Tao Yuanming. My pictorial representation would not be an illustration to that fable, which is about finding, more or less unvoluntarily, of an idyllic utopia, hidden somewhere, where it still does exist, as a sort of remnant of an Golden Age, but if searched for, voluntarily, shows to be impossible to locate again. The pictures that I have chosen, to go along with a personal story of the pandemic, are a representation by Chinese artist Qi Baishi (above), a representation which I like for its inspiring vagueness and indirectness (the essential can be related best only indirectly), and with pictures taken by a camera, which are about the doors (of the perception) being open, respectively closed (in times of crisis).

Dropping a basket of apples would have meant risk, during the pandemic. Because people are helpful, and sooner than you would expect, they kneel, with you and very close to yourself, who is already kneeling to put the apples back into the basket, helpful people, willing to help you with putting the apples back into the basket, but, in their spontaneous helpfulness, representing, alas, a risk of infection (and nobody was wearing masks back then).

Something like that did happen to me, at the beginning of the pandemic, and near the doors of our local supermarket. And somewhat later, on one of my personal strolls, I got asked directions: someone was asking me directions to the hospital, our local hospital, which happened to be the so-called ›reference hospital‹ during the pandemic, which meant that all of the infected people in the region, got treated there. I did give directions, yes, but from my side on the street to the other. It was close to the hospital garden anyway, only the dense vegetation did seemingly hide the contours of the building.

On one of my personal strolls, somewhat later during the pandemic, I decided to use a path that I had been walking regularly, before the pandemic, which is a path leading through a forest, a path that passes near our local hospital, and even very close to the Emergency Admission of that hospital. Somewhat strained while asking myself, if it was indeed a good idea to stroll by, exactly where the doors of cabs are opening, right at the Emergency Admission of the hospital, I decided still to use that path, but somewhat nervous, unvoluntarily, using a slightly different route to pass the hospital, finding me, after having passed the hospital garden, at an unfamiliar spot. Having left (or lost) my familiar route, I decided, rather unvoluntarily, to cross the street, and was suddenly standing at the entrance of a public garden that I had never seen before (or heard of that it even did exist). Some sort of garden, actually a meadow, with wild flowers having been sown, a wild garden, a sort of renaturalization project in our neighbourhood, and it was completly empty. Not a soul was to be seen, but curiously, I did enter that sort of little Eden that I had never entered before, walking slowly through the meadow on a little path that was leading, in a bow, then another bow, through this secret garden, from which also the reference hospital could be seen. Wild flowers, a bench to sit on, and a soothing quietness, just as needed right now.
I had never noticed that entrance, I thought, I might have been passing by, but I had simply not known that, recently, before the pandemic, one had obviously opened a garden to the public, that had been closed for some time. And perhaps I had just been the only one not knowing, but I was knowing now, and, as it seems, again the only one, since nobody was here, although the day was beautiful, and one could imagine people working in the gardens, neighboring that public garden, but nobody was there to be seen. And only at the other entrance, on the other side of the garden, I was, after some time, to see people, who, yet, seemed to decide not to enter that garden (from the other side).

Not a tribal society I did find, not the remnant of a Golden Age, only, perhaps because I had been strained and hence open to the possibility of finding such place, only a not actually secret garden, a garden that had been opened to the public for some time. And I did come back several times, later, after having found that place for the first time. And it was funny that, also the second time, I did miss the entrance for some reason. And also the third time, I was not actually sure immediately, where exactly it was.

Now in the fall of 2022, the meadow had been mowed, the garden did look more like a conventional little public garden and rather deserted, not just empty, in fact: not populated at all. And, on some level, it was not the garden that I had found, during the pandemic, because I had been different then, and the garden was different now, some time had passed, some time in which I also had thought, repeatedly, about the experience of unvoluntarily finding what you, just, seem to need. And the experience, beautiful in its simplicity, seemed to be the essence of a fable to me, a fable that I had read, some years ago (when getting familiar a little with Chinese literature). It was the aforementioned fable by Tao Yuanming, The Peach Blossom Spring, which, in my view, and in a timeless manner, tells exactly the story of what I, myself, had just experienced during the pandemic, and perhaps I had experienced it only, I am asking that myself, because I once had read that story, opeming my mind to the possibility of such experience once being also mine.

(Picture: DS)

(Picture: DS)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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