Eden at Twilight
Reynard Ardian Simacjuntak-Asia Kakehashi Project YP 20/21
During the twilight of their mortal life, the maple leaves at Eden blooms like a flower. As the season’s radiance, too, slowly twilights off and the bleak winter wind slowly creeps in, the leaves bleed scarlet, turning their last drop of life into unparalleled beauty. The scarlet, as if an ember in a midwinter fireplace, burns into the minds of most as it, too, was burned into mine, as I witnessed the twilight of their life at the Eden that is Meiji Jingu.
Meiji Jingu is a shrine at the heart of Tokyo, where nature lives in a sacred ground alongside the spirits. It was a utopia where the light that peeks through the forest feels like heaven’s belonging, and the sound of the rustling leaves intertwined harmoniously with the sound of footsteps on the gravel road. The scarlet and gold, contrasting the deep green, then transcended its beauty to heavenly levels. If being in Japan is like a dream, then entering this Eden must have been like a dream within a dream.
The cycle of life and death is generally a naturally reoccurring order in the lifespan of a leaf, as though dreams, too, are fabricated and shattered, taken ahold of, and then let free. To wither as death strangles its life and be forgotten as a fleeting memory, or to burst out color at moments of its passing and be the prettiest daydream amidst nightmares, never to be forgotten until the tree itself decays. Or rather to live evergreen as the coldness of winter is melted by the warmth of its spirit, staying in dreamland never to wake. These are the possible fates that destiny brings to a single leaf, and thus to a single dream.
This dream I’m having right now, however lucid, cannot turn evergreen. But before my eyes awaken from this deep slumber, I’d not let it wither and rot, rather let it bloom into scarlet as if a midsummer firework in a festive, cloudless night. And whenever I dream once more, I’d pray that the moment I’d have to wake never comes, and the leaf that at that time will be borne from my tree, will finally be evergreen.
