Almond Blossoms

There’s a fairytale magic about Studio Ghibli animations — one so homely yet so profound.

 

Watching each scene unfold was resemblant of climbing through a rose-tinted looking glass, and though you didn’t exactly wind up in the fantastical wonderland Alice ventured through, the world did appear different. The skies were a shade bluer, the grass grew somewhat greener, and you swore the sun shined a little brighter. It seemed as if whatever modicum of vigor lay dormant in everyday humdrum, has now come alive.

 

Authentic simplicity. It was Hayao Miyazaki’s heart the ribcage of Studio Ghibli’s esse embraced ever so tenderly. A particular citation from Hector Garcia’s work Ikigai, reflects the curious disposition of Japanese animation’s luminary:

 

“.... and (Miyazaki) makes his entire team draw by hand. He “directs” his films by rendering on paper even the tiniest detail, achieving flow by drawing, ....”

 

Miyazaki exalted the mundane, so much as to strip himself of computerized divinity to sing psalms through refined sketches on traditional medium. It was this frame of familiarity that embodied what Studio Ghibli was; tales of empathic human experiences led by imperfect characters, rooted in the familiar magical realism projecting its very sentiment: finding magic in the minuscule and significance in the art of being present.

 

All too often, new beginnings are reckoned as cathartic renaissance setting alight by the baptismal fires of pandemonium what you’d thought you knew, reducing to ashes all deemed unworthy of kingdom come. An inferno so grand its existence demands your utmost attention, a purging blaze whose manifestation you’ll undoubtedly notice, right?

 

So you look for it. You stepped on the last train, took the leap of faith, answered the siren’s call, bidding farewell to the comfort of your home to seek out a strange land you’d never known. And you felt lost. You were no closer to your journey’s end, if anything the sight of others at their advent of awakening begs the fateful question: “When will my life begin?“

 

New dawns swiftly morphed into restless mornings where you dreaded sitting with a wanderer’s anxiety, faced with the uncertainty of not finding sanctuary in your homeland, but not having a clear destination you’re moving towards either. Further magnified by the circumstances of present-day new normal, it was as if you detached from life and all sense of time, paralyzed frozen in solitude, still.

 

But don’t you get it?

A silence so loud only heralds the greatest sound.

 

For as long as it remembers, the earth’s heavenly gardens have always been left ablaze by the savage degenerates of urbanization, its vitality devoured in trade for the foul defilement industrialization shut its eyes to. It burned tragically in harmony to the sorrowful elegies eulogizing extinct flora and fauna, a collective weeping that only until recently, began to gain momentum and touched humanity’s core. Data and statistics depicted rising temperatures, water scarcity, contaminated rivers and polluted air among others, an omen foretelling our reality‘s spiral into impending dystopia. But then lockdowns came to pass. Human business ceased and the world was given just that: a moment to take deep breaths, silence.

 

And it healed — however temporary. Universal skies cleared into blues you remember running around fields under whilst having the time of your childhood. The murky sediments of Venetian canals settled to bare the underlying aquatic ecosystem it always held — a kaleidoscope of freshwater vivacity against the sandy waterbed. Wildflowers lavished in the most improbable of places and creatures roamed human dwellings, analogous to gospel’s account of the world’s genesis.

 

For that matter, we humans too, metamorphose in the cocoon of stillness. One of Van Gogh’s pieces which unfailingly captivates me is Almond Blossoms, his Japanese-influenced tour-de-force framing bold outlines of blossoming almond branches against a cerulean sky. When painting his series of Almond Blossoms, Van Gogh had just moved to Arles, desiring a pause from Paris’ relentless winters, only to find harsh snowfall upon his arrival. It didn’t last for too long, and once blooming flower buds on trees proclaimed newborn spring, he was reinvigorated with novel zeal — one that came to be the driving force behind the most rhapsodized works of his lifetime. 

 

A silver thread struck out in the tapestry of his sojourn in Southern France: no matter the season, he painted these blossoms without exception. In the colder winter, though his reticent residence confined him beneath guarded walls, he produced still-life pieces musing on flowering trees and almond branches. In the warmer spring, Van Gogh’s era of roaring revival, he conceived the complete series of Almond Blossoms, woodcuts that to him inspired rebirth, recovery, awakening, hope — new beginnings.

 

In a tumultuously dynamic society, we’re perpetually looking for the next big thing worth remembering. We forget the simple joys, so commonplace we spare no second glance towards them. We move heavens and earth in search of our transient supernova, never stepping back to count our lucky stars. We have grown jaded to the mundane, not until we dream of an epiphany that wakes us from our slumber. An enlightenment brought upon by the awareness that we’re undervaluing how meaningful opening time capsules or a typical Valentine’s celebration could be. As the lead researcher of Harvard Business School Zhang Ting finely puts it:

 

“People find a lot of joy in rediscovering a music playlist from months ago or an old joke with a neighbor, even though those things did not seem particularly meaningful in the moment.”

 

For one, this revelation was prompted to me the hard way. When you cross paths with another human being, you might not think much of an exchange of Instagram usernames. But when they’ve transfigured into your twin flame, when you’re now emotionally bound to a soul connection nosediving in the waters of unspoken intimacy, wanting isn’t enough. You learn to hold on to any scintilla of tangibility that seeps through cracks of the hope of it all. Witty memes and song recommendations sent through chat messages, spontaneous voice calls an odd concoction of hearty laughs and taking in each other’s quietude, 3AM streams that only reluctantly ended at the break of dawn, everything. The littlest things were able to manifest the invisible thread tying you to them and for a split second, it made you feel their phantom presence linger next to you, even though you’re 270 miles apart. You start appreciating the most trivial twinklings, braving a 10 hour road-trip and back, crossing provincial boundaries simply to spend the afternoon in their company, to physically see the smile you’ve only documented through photographs they sent. And when the ride of existence gets rather turbulent, its ordinary inception and yearning  to see through simple pleasures begin again, will keep you going. Like they did for me. 

 

In Princess Mononoke, yet another Studio Ghibli production, the main protagonist received a piece of advice I believe sums this up:

 

“Life is suffering. It is hard. The world is cursed. But still, you find reasons to keep living."

 

And this poetic gem from Haemin Sunim which sent shivers down my spine the first time I read it in The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down:

 

“What makes music beautiful is

the distance between one note and another.

What makes speech eloquent is

the appropriate pause between words.

From time to time we should take a breath

and notice the silence between sounds.”

 

Live in the present. It’s perfectly okay if the reason you breathe is to witness your new beginnings take form in the joys of mundane matters and life’s humble familiarity, one day at a time, one romanticized simple pleasure to the next. Whether it’s to feel the solacing touch of your other half, or to listen to your favorite musician’s outpouring in their magnum opus, or to savor the normality of home-cooking that warms your heart like honey, or to just get by and feel the adrenaline rush of each state-of-the-art carpe-diem, live. After all, stillness begets change, silence begets healing and rest begets progress. So drive on, and may you bloom, in time with the series of Almond Blossom you’re painting beneath your moon. 

 

Additional Content: check out the specially curated Almond Blossoms playlist here 🤍