Tag: sakura

SakuLA

.Reading time 3 minutes.

transplanted in LA
i discover delicate sakura and tall palm trees
blossoming together

It is now sakura season in Kyoto, Japan. And unexpectedly, to me, sakura are blossoming at the same time here, far away across the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles, where the tall palm trees are emblematic. Am I right to say that sakura will be the last thing to come to mind when thinking of LA? This city conjures three things: Hollywood, beaches, and palm tree lined boulevards. But quietly, sakura are here too, pink and light in this sprawling City of Angels.

When writing Japanese words in romaji, the Roman alphabet, we use the letter R to spell words that include the syllables: ra-ri-ru-re-ro (らりるれろ). For example, cherry blossom or sakura. But the sound is not a straight R-sound, like rah, ree, roo, reh, roe. It’s closer to something of an LR-sound, like lrah, lree, lroo, lreh, lroe… So it would be better to write sakulra, but then it would be mispronounced as sa-kul-ra. So maybe it is actually better to write sakula, and specifically for cherry blossoms in LA, sakuLA! Saku means to blossom. So sakula or sakuLA could have a double meaning: LA cherry blossom, or blossom LA—a unique variety of sakura only to be found in LA!

We are transplanted… in flowers, as peoples and languages, as ever changing and creative expressions of culture brought together by chance or by fate. Perhaps by love. It is something beautiful in the soil and it is something beautiful in the sky. SakuLA and palm trees blossoming together. Holding hands, we dance in the wind, pink and light.

Below is a flower-photo montage created by my phone, magically just on the day I started writing on the theme of being transplanted in LA and blossoming like sakura/sakuLA together with the LA-local palm tree. I did not choose any of the photos nor their sequence, yet the last photo is the same as the featured one above, which I had already selected earlier. Maybe it’s accidental coincidence. Or maybe it’s all the work of an angel—here in LA, in this sprawling city of angels.

さくらさくら sakura sakura

.Reading time 1 minute.
singing in pink light
this crown of floating petals
carries my heart home

What is it for you, which carries your heart back to your faraway home? Be it geographical or temporal distance? Have you ever felt that? That twinge? That pang in your heart when the great distance announces itself abruptly, with such eloquence? Suddenly, in a moment, you are both here and there. Or rather, simultaneously there and not there.

For me, it is sakura*—the cherry blossoms. Their delicate lightness acquiring a new sense of gravity in a home away from home. Bittersweetness, in full bloom. And so still, i dance under the trees of pink reverie; drunk with beauty. Here and There. Everywhere.

*While the chrysanthemum may be the national flower of Japan and the seal of the imperial family, sakura—the cherry blossom—is without doubt, the national “people’s flower” of Japan. When sakura blossom in spring, many people enjoy walks or picnics and parties under the soft canopies of pink petals. Many years ago (before the date which it was published), I wrote another blog post which illuminates the significance of sakura in Japan: https://michiruadrienne.com/2021/06/02/grace/