
In honor of my having read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, on this Friday I’m admiring this lovely flower, digitally captured in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
And I’m reflecting that I’ve never seen a flower like this blooming in my subdivision, or jutting along the pathways through my local forests, or emerging from my nearby lakes; but they bloom in someone’s yard, in someone’s local natural areas.
What is normal, and what is exotic? It’s all perspective.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a study in perspective: What is beautiful, and what is horrific? What is sanity, and what is insanity? What is the truth here . . . and the whole truth? These questions the novel continually brings before us—and answers by revealing this:
It depends on whom you ask.
What is your normal? What is your exotic? What happens when you flip them in your mind?
First of all, I’m getting that book. Your post inspired me. The message is nice; ‘it depends’ It really does, doesn’t it.
If I saw that flower I may not have thought it to be exotic, but diverse. In my neighborhood I’ll come across Bamboo, something native to Southeast Asia. I’ll think, someone brought that here and they went through the trouble to bring it here, so they could have some aspects of home. Maybe they brought it for themselves, for comfort. But I also get to experience the plant, thanks to their effort and they’ll never know I’m writing about that.
Same with your discovery. The person who planted that flower may never know you went through the trouble of writing and editing a blog on something as simple as planting a flower. But that happened.
Getting back to what’s exotic and what’s deemed normal. We have a choice to think how we wish to see things. We could call the person who planted the flower, selfish. Maybe that plant might disrupt the natural environment of our native species. Who can tell? We can hate the Bamboo, say This is not our Culture. We can choose to be that way. So is that way of thinking exotic or the new normal?
this post can easily degenerate into a political argument, seeing how our current administration likes to think and no one in the party seems to care enough to step forward to thwart it. But you saw the flower as exotic and assuming beautiful. I see diversity as beautiful.
Thanks for bringing up the concept of diversity. Thatβs key. Instead of thinking in terms of self vs. other, thinking in terms of inclusiveness brings about a sense of global community.