Lest my lover should think
My face not as lovely as the flowers
I pin it slanting in my cloud like hair
And ask him to make a comparison
Li Ch’ing-chao
(1084-1151)
Beautiful Tahitian Woman in Traditional Headdress photo from Mail Online
If I have lived there long enough, one of the things I remember about a place after I have forgotten people’s names are the regional wildflowers. As a stranger in a strange land, they are one of the first things that offer me the comfort of familiarity once I see them for the second time.
Cyprus is full of yellow wildflower fields right now that feel very familiar to me now that I have been here 5 years. I know well the place in the sidewalk where I can expect more because that is the exact place they came up last year.
Today I woke up with many worries and missing home, but as I went to walk our youngest dog down between the fields something possessed me and I pinched off a flower and put it in my hair. I have left it there all day because it made me feel completely different immediately. I was light and happy and no longer worried. I wore it to do the shopping and my work and people smiled at me. I feel just fine now.
Maybe we should wear flowers in our hair more often just to lighten up a bit. I think we could learn a little something from women of yore -
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite painters who never failed to notice or delight in the flower in a woman’s hair -
Tahitian Women on Beach, 1891 by Paul Gauguin
Three Tahitian Women, 1896 by Paul Gauguin
And with that beautiful Tahitian woman again -
(No wonder Paul went to Tahiti.)
PS Tradition says if the flower is worn on your left it means you are taken, if on the right then you are single
