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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 04:19pm on 24/08/2011 under ,


Edelweiss is really weird. Of course I had heard of it before, the song especially, but I never saw it before my mother pointed it out for sale at a gift shop, up in a pass in the Dolomites. Half the passersby exclaimed in delight on seeing it, and since she had paused to draw the flowers, she could hardly mistake the consensus.

I saw lots more of it the next day: it decorated every tombstone in the gorgeously-situated cemetery in the town of Colle S. Lucia.

It was not even white, contrary to the song, but a pale, pale green. Its five-plus centers reminded me of nothing so much as Cthulhoid eyes. It struck me as a notably alien and unfamiliar plant. Yet, for the locals, it is a ubiquitous badge of homeland, especially with its geometry abstracted into even fives: five centers, five short petals, five long ones, on tablecloths, hiking badges, and shopping bags.
There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] desperance.livejournal.com at 05:19pm on 24/08/2011
Oh, damn you, Owlfish! I am now earwormed for days. Days'n'days. And eyewormed too, with images of Christopher Plummer not moving his lips as he "sings"... (They dubbed him, you know. I was shocked to learn that, being young at the time. He did actually want to sing it, because he can actually sing, but they dubbed him anyway.)
 
posted by [identity profile] sioneva.livejournal.com at 06:39pm on 24/08/2011
I always felt sorry for him b/c of the dubbing :(
 
posted by [identity profile] sioneva.livejournal.com at 06:38pm on 24/08/2011
When I visited Winnie (Jennifer Laing) in Austria over Christmas when I was doing JYA Geneva, her mother-in-law-to-be gave me a book of Austrian poetry with a dried Edelweiss tucked in it. I still have it.
 
posted by [identity profile] pennski.livejournal.com at 06:56pm on 25/08/2011
It is a gloriously alien plant. I think it looks soft grey/ white when dried.

And I too shall be earwormed, but will enjoy the experience.

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