Arty Zine - Hints of Florals

Working in fits and starts over the last week, this zine is an assemblage of floral imagery in a combination of abstract and semi-realistic versions.  

That said, I've added a few words to this zine.  'Flower Power' in unusual lettering was created on one page.  The rest of the text appears on another page.  The latter includes a phrase I just discovered today while doing a search of flowers and philosophy.  "Mono no Aware" is Japanese in origin.  From an excerpt of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs write-up about the meaning of the phrase, this is how it is described:

It boils down to this: appreciate the moment, because the beauty experienced in it will never be the same.  It will pass.  It will end.  And that is okay because as life changes, new beauty, perhaps of a different kind, will arrive.  Every season the cherry blossoms die.  But every year, they come back to, once again, coat the streets in their ethereal and incomparable demise.

So an Emily Dickinson quote from one of her poems seemed like a very poignant ending to the text in this zine.  It is, "To be a flower, is profound responsibility."

Whether you see flowers when you pass them, stop and really look to relish those along your path as you walk, or love having flowers surrounding you all the time (e.g. in a garden, in home bouquets, in flowering plants at work, etc.), they buoy us and lift up our outlook.  Flowers are wondrous, and like the cherry blossoms they bloom with beauty, droop and decay, and are replaced when the cycle repeats itself.  Every bloom is different and possesses a beauty unique to itself.  In the moments we notice or stumble upon one that touches us, take a moment to truly see it - as each one will end, because life changes.  The next season will grow new and different beauties to appreciate in their moments of bloom -- before they too will pass into memory.