Apricot flower

Of all the good things, we call something rare “priceless.” Apricot flower is one of them. There are many spring flowers, but few flowers blossom surviving the cold winter. Our ancestors praised white apricot flowers as pure and red apricot flowers as mysterious. To them, apricot flowers were never an object. They thought the flowers had a spirit in them. What was inside a pot was not just a plant but a kind of heart.

Toegye Yi Hwang would be the person most famous for his love for apricot flower. He wrote more than 100 poems on apricot flowers, including a question and answer poem about apricot flower. In this poem, there is also someone, who loves apricot flowers. The poet is sitting face to face with an apricot flower. It is as if the poet is making an eye contact with someone and sitting close enough to rub foreheads. Then, the poet asks questions to the apricot flower. What do you say? Is it this way?

To be sure, the apricot flower cannot talk. The poet is aware of that. But why does the poet keep asking questions? Like mentioned above, apricot flower is not an object but a spirit. It has my wishes, hopes, intentions, and will that even I am not aware of. So I should ask it. Am I heading and going in the right direction? The direction we are heading is both ours and not ours. We do not know where we are headed even though we are going. So we feel our way, keep asking questions. Are we headed in the right direction?