Winter, flowers, and the Grail

I downloaded a collection of H. G. Wells short stories so that I could read "The Door in the Wall," but since I've got it and all, I figured I might as well read the rest of them. Today I read "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," which is about -- spoiler warning! -- a flower that kills people, one of its weapons being the heady scent that renders its victims unconscious. It reminded me of a sonnet by my uncle, William John Tychonievich, called "O Poison Rose of Poetry," so I looked it up and reread it for the first time in well over a decade.

O poison Rose of Poetry, we drink

Your deadly nectar deep with each inhale

Of life's sweet atmosphere. Our breath does stink

Of your humid, earthy vapors. O Grail

Of Thorns and bright red-colored Seduction,

Your Goddess-sent scent both lures and entraps

Butterfly bards pulled by your soft suction

Into this matrix of sharp spiny paps.

Within your lattice prison we flutter

And strive, suffocating on your perfume

Until we fall and our corpses clutter

Your attar-petaled bed, our womb and tomb.

And here we lay, amid robust young shoots,

Our rotting essence feeding hungry roots.

I had forgotten there was a Grail reference in there! Earlier today I read and posted about an /x/ post called "Quantum Spacetime is the Holy Grail."

The main character in the Wells story is named Winter Wedderburn. Winter is a rather unusual given name, and for some reason what it made me think of was the 1992 Tori Amos song of that name, even though it's probably been 20 years or more since I've listened to anything by that singer, whose persona and most of whose music I've come to find actively repellent. (I was a big fan in my college days. Things change, my dear.) "Winter" is good, though, so I found it on YouTube and played it. I had never seen the video before.

Most of the video is pretty straightforward -- Tori walking around, singing, playing the piano, etc. -- but at one point it switches to a black screen with a big silver cup -- a trophy perhaps (it goes with the lyrics "you say I wanted you to be proud"), but also suggestive of the Grail.

A hand from offscreen pulls the cup away, and then some flowers float in and arrange themselves into this circular configuration. Then it's back to your regularly scheduled walking, singing, and piano playing.

The circle of flowers is a weird sync, since earlier today I saw this on /x/, posted with no comment but "what did they mean by this?":

Has Charles not been crowned yet? Kind of taking their time, aren't they? It's just some innocent graphic design, incorporating the floral emblems of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland -- unless, that is, you're /x/ enough to see the inverted crosses hidden in the shamrocks and the inverted pentagram at the top of the crown, usurping the place of the Cross. Anyway, whatever else it may be, it's a pretty specific sync with the Tori Amos video.