Of Iris descant

E.M. Forster wrote, “Only connect.” And connection is a process, an unfolding development, a flowering. Flowers exist to mediate union, the sexual union that itself flowers the seeds that are sent forth, scattered, dispersed to emerge again into union. The movement is in and out; out and in.

The iris flower, with its petals both upright and drooping, is an amazing connecting form. It seduces insect pollinators visually. Then, by the mere being of its wonderful architecture, of its landing stage petals, the iris compels its guests to leave behind only the pollen of other flowers and to take away only its own pollen, safe to be given as gift of connection to others. No opportunity for connection is wasted.

The iris is quintessential bridge of what it is to the other that it is not.

The iris flower, growing out of the earth, has the single pointed shapely focus of connecting its reproductive jewels to the other through air born messengers. In this way, flower is like the goddess that shares its name. In Greek mythology, Iris is the messenger of the gods. She unites earth and heaven; she links humanity to the divine beyond. She travels with the speed of wind to the ends of all places. She links the earth to the depths of sea and underworld and to the heights of the sky. And in the sky she makes her mark; she leaves the imprint of her coming and going. Her path is the rainbow. In Greek, her name means rainbow.

Rainbows have inspired narrative creators from every space and time. The Chinese see rainbows as repaired slits in the sky, sealed by the goddess with stones of many colors. For the Hindu it is the bow of the god of love, and in Norse mythology the rainbow is the bridge connecting the realms of divine and human. For Gilgamesh and Noah, the rainbow end is the promise of the end of destruction.

My favorite rainbow story is the Irish tale of the leprechaun. These little people, the flowering of degenerate fairy mothers who are not wholly good nor wholly evil, hide their appropriated treasures at the end of rainbows. This is a masterful idea, an unfailingly perfect hideaway, since rainbows do not exist in any actual place.

In fact, rainbows do not really exist at all. Rainbow is merely a name that describes a vast interlocking network of circumstance. There is the union of light shining and droplets of moisture and the earth’s atmosphere. And there is the observing eye that brings into being an interior similitude brighter than the exterior, and an apparent position that is opposite the sun.

The eye’s iris, the colorful sphincter around the pupil of the eye, controls the amount of outer light that connects to the inner retina and the cerebral places beyond that are hidden like gods in cranial Asgards or Olympuses. The pupil, too, is merely emptiness: a hole. Yet it is the road, black and embraced by the iris color, that is round rainbow window to the soul.

Whose heart does not leap up with Wordsworth’s at rainbow insight? The Iris path can be in the inaccessible heavens or closer in the iridescence of soap bubbles or butterfly wings. Iris does not leave her mark, but only her path of connection in a moment.

Poet John Keats saw Isaac Newton’s scientific deconstruction of the rainbow as the rainbow’s diminished unweaving. But the vision of this pirate is positioned closer to the perspective of Richard Dawkins, who sees science as the inspiration of poetry. The in breath gathers, and then releases out, paradoxical paroxysm, both connection and separation.

All of this it is. And none, really. Iris knows, and sings as she dances into being the bliss of the ever emerging net of the possible impossible. Like Nietzsche, pirates believe only in gods who dance the end of gravity’s rainbow, creating the connection of counterpoint sweeter than eye has seen or ear has heard. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.