A Blossom of Pansy

 

Pansies never fail to remind me of Yeong-hi of Happiness Village, playing the broken guitar from Terminal Market with those blossoms in her hair. [Yeong-hi is a character in a 1978 novel by Cho Se-hi, in which Happiness Village is a section of Seoul resided by unhappy people and Terminal Market is a place where unsellable things are sold.] Neither tall nor flashy, pansies usually sit shyly along the edges of a flowerbed. The buds open up in such a quiet way as a butterfly opens her wings. It is a sheer mistery that there should have been so much resources in the meagre amount of soil for dozens of such elegant blossoms.

 

Surely I have much more resources in me than that amount of soil. But am I capable of producing a single blossom of pansy? I feel ashamed of myself at the modest sight of pansy blossoms.