Live Virtual Group Session: 12pm EST February 24th 2021

5 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem Pink Hydrangea by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Walter Arndt, paired with the painting “Pink Hydrangea” by Ephraim Rubenstein. Both posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a color-filled moment.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

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Please join us for our next session Monday March 1st at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Pink Hydrangea by Ephraim Rubenstein
oil 20″ x 26″ 1993 private collection
Pink Hydrangea
by Rainer Maria Rilke
( translation: Walter Arndt )

Who thought such pink could be? Who knew it there
Accumulating in each blushing cluster?
Like gilded things which by and by unluster
They gently grow unred as if from wear.

That one should give such rosiness out free!
Does it stay theirs still, smiling where it went?
Are angels there to take it tenderly like a scent?

Or, it may be, they only let it go
That it might never learn of overblowing.
Beneath this pink there lurked a greenness, though,
Which listened and now fades away, all knowing.

5 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12pm EST February 24th 2021”

  1. michele348

    About a color-filled moment~~~

    I stood in a room which opened up skyward.
    About me, there was the sweet scent of flowers, of golden pollen floating in the air.
    Around me danced hundreds of Nature’s palette of colors,
    butterflies dancing in the air,
    flitting about,
    landing on my shoulders and head.
    Neon flashing lights all about me.
    Purples, reds, yellows, greens- all colors of the rainbow.
    All presented to me to try to take in, to try to absorb.
    The immensity of the grandeur took my breath away.

    A moment filled with color,
    a moment of life,
    of hope.
    I am renewed.

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  2. Derek

    I am fascinated by the idea that this flower has had two separate experiences. I have never thought about this in the context of human life, so to sit with this thought brings to mind many questions. Can a person have fragmented experiences?

    The poem says the pink flowers “might never learn of overblowing.
    Beneath this pink there lurked a greenness, though,
    Which listened and now fades away, all knowing.”

    It is interesting how we focus our attention on the beautiful pink flowers when the greenery holds the “all-knowing.” What does this say about society?

    The pink followers were isolated from the “all-knowing” when they were brought inside and raised by the person who chose them. We are limited to what we know by the walls we are placed within. Do we know more than we consciously experience, because the greenery goes unnoticed until we sit with ourselves to reflect on what is inside?

    Perhaps deep within ourselves is our greenery, which has been experiencing life differently this entire time, but our greenery goes unnoticed because we have been raised in a room that isolates us from the “all-knowing.”

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    Reply
    • michele348

      Derek, I agree with your thoughts. Excellent.
      A person is unaware of the strength and power contained within oneself until you are tested. The test may be a physical one or an emotional one. I was leveled by a heart attack years ago, but I summoned what was within me and eventually came back to a form better than before(using the “greenery” that was part of my inner core to build upon). The trials of life are excellent teachers and motivators. The potential lies within each of us, we bring it forth in times of need.

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  3. Janine M Mariscotti

    A color-filled moment?

    I can’t think of anything that comes to mind in response to this prompt but I do recall how, at those first moments following the birth of my children, taking in the miracle of each tiny pink finger curled in around my own. And the thin-skinned, purplish mottled fingers of my father as he took leave of this place.

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