KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

I had been wanting to write about the osmanthus. About how late it was, and how strange it felt. But then the attacks on Israel, and the attacks on Gaza happened – unstomachable, brutal atrocities, so much immediate and destruction (is this the beginning ? In all probability, yes… so much to fear and dread in this situation it’s really horrible) – and it just didn’t feel right.

For the record, though, though a little dry perhaps at first, after the long hot summer when the flowers probably felt too cowed by the intense heat to open, they did, finally, two weeks later than usual, and the heady, intense, lush innocence of the white floral tangerine apricot the florets emit took you unawares; while perfuming the entire air of cities, all opening in tandem with their underground connections and hidden language, a constant, brimming smell hum of warm October, certain pockets of intenser osmanthus would make you gasp and stop in your tracks as your sad thoughts and worries about the world were suddenly interrupted, momentarily vanishing as you looked up and saw you were standing directly beneath a blossoming tree..

Last night we went to see Martin Scorcese’s new film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, a slow, dark and rivetingly poisonous epic about the deliberate eradication of Osage Nation Indians by avaricious Oklahoma oil men back in the 1920’s. Violent, beautiful and sad, as I wept quietly in my cinema seat at the end, and reflecting on it again today, I thought about how deeply, deeply regrettable and tragic it is that human beings are still so myopic and ethnocentric that they (we) can so easily dehumanize and annihilate each other without compunction, shoot bullets into each other’s heads at close range, blow people up, drive knives into the backs of others – women, babies, anyone, with such vicious ferocity and unforgivingly intense hatred.

There is no real connection between what I am writing about here, other than the fact that the Osage loved, and love a, particular flower that blossoms in vast swathes of carpeted colour in Spring, just as all cultures do flowers all over the world; the sakura cherry blossom and beloved kinmokusei / osmanthus in Japan; the roses in the Middle East. I don’t know precisely what flowers in Palestine and Israel in spring and autumn, but I fervently hope that some sense and humanity can prevail, that more precious life is not wasted in vain, that a semblance of peace is restored in the region, and that the people there, like me, will be able to just walk along and for a second or two, lose themselves contentedly in the transporting eternality of the air .