Burning red!!! Taylor knows.

I'm telling you, strawberries & red awake the romance, even if you are a hard nut to crack.

Passing by a bookstore in the city, I accidentally glanced at the title of a book in the window that said "Red is for remembrance" and by itself, without any volition or effort, fields of memory began to open, the brain arranged the images by itself: it was sunny , an endless field of ripe wheat, Maximus standing in the middle of the field and running his hand through the ears of wheat, everything in slow motion. He finally found his peace after death and went home to join his murdered family, whose death he had previously avenged, as well as the assassination of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The wonderful image of that field is in the genius scene of the movie "Gladiator", and its director Ridley Scott knows how to transform fields into memories. In my head, I frame images of other fields: close-up over the gladiator's hand in the wheat waving in the wind, we see the flowers of the red poppy as a contrast to the ripe wheat.
June is at its peak. The camera descends on those delicate poppy flowers or wild poppy flowers, which are symbols of love and death. Love because it is red, tender and fragile <3 and death because even in Greco-Roman myths the wild poppy flower were given to the dead. We can also find poppy flowers on tombstones, because throughout history they have been symbols of eternal sleep. Poppy flowers also have their own song, by the Canadian military doctor John McCrae, which became the most famous poem on the subject of the First World War and became a kind of anthem for Remembrance Day, which is celebrated in all countries of the Commonwealth. On the jerseys of the English Premier League players and on the coaches' suits, there are red poppy flowers that symbolize the battlefield soaked in the blood of fallen soldiers and are worn in honor of the memory of all the victims of the Great War. In the movie playing in my head, the image of the field of red poppies is slowly fading away. In the background Marlena Dietrich is singing „Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" The curtain is coming down. Where have all those flowers gone?

New pictures in my memory create a whole new scene. The sight of the iron gate in Liverpool appears, which is the symbol of the most famous strawberry field in the world, and behind which there is no strawberry field, but it is still called that way. That Victorian gate and the story that goes with it were made famous by the Beatles with their famous 1967 song "Strawberry Fields Forever", which has forever been considered one of the greatest pop songs of all time. Released in February of that year as a double A single along with Penny Lane, it immediately won the hearts of fans around the world. But that optimistic melody of the song is not inspired by any beauty at all, but by the gloomy story of John Lennon's childhood and his difficult upbringing in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, next to the Salvation Army children's home called "Strawberry Field". The sad story of Lennon's upbringing begins with the absence of a father who, as a merchant at sea, was often away from home, and a mother who had a child (Lennon's half-sister) with another man, so that the social services intervened and sent John to live with his aunt Mimi in a suburb of Liverpool. Living under the strict control of his aunt, Lennon found relief by secretly sneaking out of the house and jumping over the wall to play hide-and-seek with his friends in the orphanage's gardens. Once a year he ran to listen to the brass band of the Salvation Army, which played at the annual summer party in the garden, in the park near the house. Lennon simply loved that. As he himself felt abandoned, he identified with that old Victorian house and the orphans who lived in it, which created an unbreakable bond between them.

Years later, inspired by his boyhood experiences and the geography of his childhood, John Lennon wrote the song "Strawberry Fields Forever", adding the S to Field, thinking it made the song sound better. And he was right, with that the strawberry fields became the strawberry fields of all of us. The house was demolished six years after the publication of the song and replaced by a smaller children's home that operated until 2005, when the orphanage was closed after 70 years, the remaining children were transferred to foster families and the original buildings were demolished. Few of them remain, including the famous red gate, so although the site is dilapidated and abandoned, Strawberry Field is still a place of pilgrimage for tourists, Liverpool visitors and Beatles fans. John Lennon was killed on December 8, 1980 in New York in front of the house where he lived. He was not buried anywhere, he has no grave, he was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in Central Park where there is a memorial area "Strawberry Fields" with a monument in the form of a mosaic. From the "Strawberry Field" at the beginning of life in the suburbs of Liverpool to the "Strawberry Field" in New York, which is his eternal home, John Lennon has come full circle.