my narrow world...

[za_lee]

there's this early 20th century chinese poetess, bing xin, whose poem is one of few i remember by heart:

Flower at the foot of the wall
When you gaze admiringly at yourself,
All the world grows small.

all the years i've carried it, i'd always carried with it my first impression of a world being filled by a lovely, narcissistic flower. now i wonder why i thought that was such a beautiful thing...and what, this woman who took the characters for "frozen, cold, frigid" and "heart, mind, intuitive being" as her pen name, and who did so while penning stories and poems for children, really thought of this flower...