The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says: "What flower expresses days go by, and they just keep going by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future. Days go by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future?" And the florist says: "White Lily."

The film is Berlin Alexanderplatz, and the flowers are white carnations. But I think Laurie Anderson cast a better metaphor than Fassbinder in this case. For there is a language of flowers (the best English-language book wit this title is "The Language of Flowers; with Illustrative Poetry") which provides encoded messages between sender and recipient. "By all the token-flowers that tell. What words can never speak so well... Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ!" (Lord Byron, "The Maid of Athens"). It is a well-known convention that white lilies are for funerals, and many may know that it has a symbolic value of remembrance, and fewer still that it is for restoration. But "The Language of Flowers" (p148) says something different. It speaks of, in the continental tradition (fleur-de-lis), of the lily representing nothing less than majesty.

Another tradition which I have become familiar with during my time in Timor-Leste was "hatais metan" ("wear black"). From the information I have received, it is used for those in mourning, in remembrance of those no longer with us, an often expressed in wearing a small square of fabric attached to one's clothes. After a year, the item is removed, "kore metan" ("untying the black") and typically a reflective party is held for those who shared the loss, not unlike the Celtic ceremonial wake. The tradition made a lot of sense to me; it is deeply respectful to mourn a person for a year, but even a departed spirit would want someone to continue to live their life. Besides, as the Sufi comic Nasreddin Hodja pointed out, a lot can happen in a year. Maybe the horse will even learn to sing!

Indeed, a lot has happened in my life since last August. I have travelled to China three times (including visiting Qomolangma-Everest and The Great Wall) and New Zealand once, and presented at three international conferences. I have run 17 workshops on high performance computing and parallel programming, along with additional guest lectures at the University of Melbourne. I've started a climatology doctorate, which I am powering my way through, purchased (half) a property in Darwin and paid off my apartment in Southbank. I conducted a fundraising campaign for the Isla Bell Charitable Fund through the RPG Review Cooperative and also published three issues of the namesake journal. My health has improved "somewhat" with a very strong exercise and diet regimen. And, at the point of being a little ridiculous in my sensitivities, I have two new pet rats in my life.

It all adds to the metaphor; the idea of the days pulling us to the future, a trajectory from remembrance, through restoration, toward majesty. At least it is the wish of the sender of white lilies to their departed recipient. As for the memory? I have also untied my own version of the black cloth. I once received a little cartoon self-portrait that was delightful and beautiful, drawn on a reminder note (just to add to the narrative) with a declaration of affection that I took with the seriousness I accord to such stuff ("dreams are made of"). It has adorned my wall for a year, and every day I looked upon it in remembrance, gratitude, and respect. But now the portraiture has been taken down. The black band has been untied, and today I bought white lillies.