The Crocus

Moved by the idea, rather than the sight of the first spring crocus in Kensington Gardens, which I live nowhere near and have never, I think, in my lifetime walked in, I decided to set my fingers to the keys, as people, writers particularly, these days do not set pens or any writing tools to paper, and using Virginia Woolf as my model, type mostly of the crocus and not the patron, for, as a writer, though I hesitate to give myself that occupational title, I have already broken that rule: I have dismissed them all, the crowd of patron competitors; I think only of the crocus.
The beautiful crocus with its showy white, yellow or purple flowers. (I'm not sure I've ever seen one? but I understand they are showy and, if of the iris family and not the lily which blooms in autumn, bloom in these colours.) And try to recall if they were among those who spoke to Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers. There was a Tiger-lily I remember, who, true to her name, was tigerish, and most certainly a thorny Rose, but was there a Crocus? No; for surely the crocus is too shy, too tame for such a garden; she would, I imagine, be terrified of the Lily and the Rose and need to be, if noticed trembling or closing in on herself, coaxed by a very understanding Alice to say anything, which may be of note or may not. The perfect, and imperfect, flower for a writer then, it being so tortured.
Does the crocus, I wonder, represent not the various works a writer cultivates but the actual figure behind the works, who a 'touch of sun', says Virginia, would do 'a world of good'? I certainly feel, at times, like the crocus Virginia describes: 'malformed, shrivelled on one side, overblown on the other.' But is that the lot of the writer or the lot of age, or the two combined with that of woman? Once thinking herself or considered by others 'beautiful and bright', and then...before...after...The lot of flowers; the lot of woman.
But no, Virginia was not being so literal. I have taken her meaning and deliberately twisted it, excluded all men from the garden and made it about gender, when the writer, encouraging the crocus from the soil, should be, a patron will advise, if you decide as a writer you must absolutely have one, genderless. That, I would reply, to this potential patron and potential crocus, is not the kind of patron I am prepared to court. I don't want to, in the course of anything, forget my sex, I want to identify with it.
'The Crocus, in my opinion', chimes in the Rose, 'needs no patron at all.' Her argument not elaborated on, for roses don't elaborate, that writers who have them think, and remain conscious, of them only, which is why in many gardens, including Kensington, possibly, the real crocuses, in their too-soft beds, who would, if nudged with a toe, begin to unfurl and bloom profusely, sleep and sleep and sleep.

Picture credit: Crocuses, 1938, Stanley Spencer (source: WikiArt).

From a journal entry, May 2021, with quotes from The Patron and the Crocus, an essay by Virginia Woolf.