Sakura Sakura...

The sakura, this extraordinary cherry tree that blooms in the Japanese spring, barely in bloom sees its petals fall at the slightest wind. Ephemeral destiny, image of a magnificent but precarious world, it brings us back to our own fragility. How can we admire the beauty of nature without thinking of its irremediable loss? There is perhaps in Western societies the idea of a linear, ineluctable time, to which we often respond by fleeing forward or by clinging to the past. For the Japanese, the value of ephemeral is, on the contrary, a value of rarity. The cherry blossom is all the more beautiful because it is fleeting. Since we know that it is lost in advance, then there is nothing more to lose. Let's enjoy the moment. 

The beauty of nature returns every year and its return can well be called eternal. Every spring in Japan is a promise. There is the beginning of the school year, the brand new uniforms, the beginning of the professional activity of new graduates, the renewal of life. Zen Buddhism follows a circle rather than a straight line. Capture the taste of the present, believe in renewal, the sakura, meeting point between the ephemeral and the permanent, upsets our temporality.

The Japanese are sensitive to the slightest vibrations of the earth. A country so close to nature knows, indeed, that everything changes at every moment. The seasons, multiple and abundant in Japan, are stretched out in time. They are like living beings, never in pause, always in motion and the Japanese like to give a name to the thing. Hashiri, the beginning of the season, allows to savor the fruit in its prime, when it releases its freshness and its raw energy. Then the peak of the season, sakari. And finally nagori, literally "the rest of the waves", what the wave leaves on the sand when it retreats. Traces, pebbles, memories, emotions still alive. It is the taste of ripe fruit that contains all the flavor and depth of the season that is leaving, already a certain nostalgia of separation. But Nagori is also to welcome the emotion of nostalgia, as a step aside from melancholy. To appreciate the beauty of each age, to accompany these multiple moments which are given to us to live, to remain one moment immobile before taking leave, as to contain the feeling of it...