March this year suddenly became a wet transitional moment, when today Nguyen Binh's younger sister "the heart is still like a white silk tree" still eagerly carried the drizzle to find her lover at the late spring Cheo festival, but today she felt a chill in her heart because a little hot sunlight made the beautiful trumpet buds bloom.
The rhythm of time is changing again on the city. The deep brown tiled roof of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in the cloudy white sky is no longer red with the flamboyant color of wooden fire. The sky has become clearer and lighter for white clouds to rush onto the streets, small star-shaped mouths.
That's right, time is inherently without shape, color, appearance, thanh, taste like Sunyata in Buddhism. However, mortals can still see time through the color of the seasonal flowers. Binh Nguyen Loc sees time through Ms. Mua's flying tamarind hair. And here, we see Ms. Mua when Hanoi is filled with the fragile white color and the pure fragrance of lilies.
Hanoi and lilies are a deep predestined relationship. People admire lilies and immediately think of Hanoi, as well as remember Hanoi as a memory region filled with the white color of lilies. Perhaps both Hanoi and lilies should thank painter To Ngoc Van, who symbolized this beautiful and elegant predestined relationship through the painting: "A young girl with lilies".
Young woman beside lilies" is a typical work of Vietnamese fine arts painted by To Ngoc Van in 1943. In this oil painting, the portrait of a graceful Hanoi girl in a white ao dai leaning towards a vase of lilies, i.e. lilies.
In that name, something is evoked that is both pure, arrogant, and with a hint of sadness, very similar to the beauty of Hanoi in the changing seasons. And perhaps, it is this rustic, pure beauty that always touches people's hearts, which has made lilies a flower of Hanoi.
In that painting, the girl's figure and space exude simplicity, gentle sadness, also creating a fresh beauty very Hanoi, only found in Hanoi. Therefore, without guidance, when looking at the painting, everyone knows that it is a Hanoi girl, that is Hanoi space, and that is the laziness of Spring in Hanoi.
Indeed, the beauty of lilies is completely matched with the beauty of Hanoi girls. Very rustic but no less proud, very simple but full of the splendor of a beautiful soul, a noble spirit. And above all, lilies are also like a perfect Hanoi girl, achieving enough qualities from shape, color, fragrance.
Look at a vase of lilies to contemplate the process of transformation, not only the transition from season to season, not only the gentle vibration of time, but also the larger change of a cycle of maturity. It is a miraculous butterfly growth process.
When not yet blooming, the vase is only full of young, plump and clumsy green buds, carrying a rustic and excited beauty lying on a bamboo tray placed on a bicycle to be transported from the flower village to the city. But every hour that passes, the flower's mouth gradually opens, showing off a pure, ripe and vibrant beauty.
And when the flowers bloom, the simplicity of the past has completely disappeared, only a "pure virginity" beauty remains here that Nguyen Du devoted so much effort to cultivate to describe Thuy Kieu: "Clearly in jade, ivory white. Thickly formed a natural building". The more blooming the flowers, the more intense the fragrance becomes.
To fully admire that beauty, you need to be patient and wait. Because lilies do not bloom quickly, do not wither quickly, just gently spread their wings and one day appear with extraordinary splendor, like Venus of Venus radiating a light with power to calm the soul.
That change also shows us that this is the time when Spring gradually closes, giving way to Summer, just like the saying "spring birth, summer growth". That is the age-old rule, but people still need lilies to remind them with images of flower carts selling flowers running around the streets.
This afternoon, I went to the city to go home. Seeing my life as bus trips". Trinh Cong Son wrote like that for Khanh Ly to contemplate. However, there are no bus trips that are the same. The March bus trip full of lilies at the beginning of the season will often make people's hearts flutter too much, having to blurt out: "Oh, lilies season is coming back!".
The season returns to the streets, in the bouquets of lilies neatly wrapped in old newspapers, neatly placed on bicycles rushing from the suburbs into the city, then roaming through each familiar street. From Tay Tuu, lilies wander through all directions of Lang and Kim Ma streets to enter the center, like white clouds rushing into the city.
That cloud is not as soft and porous as cotton, but it can also dispel uncomfortable humid days. Wherever the clouds fly, they blow away the lép nhép on the road, on the sidewalk, making young women put aside their melancholy to put on makeup and wear ao dai to show off white, show off beauty with lilies.
Hanoi girls are so lucky and happy to have lilies to sit and show off their colors and fragrance in To Ngoc Van's paintings. Is there any girl next to another flower to become a symbol of Hanoi like the girl next to lilies? Probably not!
And then that young woman, when she has become a woman, then an old woman forever after, still feels heartbroken when she sees lilies following cars into the city in March days. They, no matter what level of life they are at, suddenly feel themselves crossing into space back to their youth with lilies of a pure March day!
