Edelweiss

Edelweiss, edelweiss
Every morning you greet me
Small and white, clean and bright
You look happy to meet me

Blossoms of snow may you
Bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever

Edelweiss, edelweiss
Bless my homeland forever

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Some songs just have a way of doing things to me. Like send me down one memory lane which I know is not mine. Or give me intense feelings I know don’t belong to me.

I shed tears for a pain I have not experienced; my heart breaks for a love I have not lost; I hurt for a past that is not mine.

*

The flower in the photo is an orchid.

燈。籠

燈。籠
{lantern}: a cage that holds light.

It’s a cage, it says. A beautiful cage.

A cage that gives us much pleasure, it exudes such beauty. Such silent beauty.

We are our own 燈籠.

We have our own unique cage that is like no other. Some of us are blue with purple spots, some of us are purple with blue stripes. Some of us are big spheres, some of us are long narrow cylinders. Some of us may even have colours more than the rainbow, and shapes more defined than a budding flower.

Some of us, we may just be made of simple translucent paper, off-white and crude.

But in all of us, no matter what shape or size, what colour or quality, we each have our own light, shining through that thin layer of paper, shining through that cage.

We are our own 燈籠.

We get to choose just how thin our cage is, and how much of our light gets to shine through.

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Photo taken at Albert Park, Auckland Lantern Festival 2009