grouper52
Masterpiece
'... AND INSISTED IN THAT QUIET WAY OF HERS, THAT EVERYTHING HAD THE SAME RIGHT TO LIVE AS WE DID ... AND THAT IT WAS A BONSAI.
Let me preface the below image with a lot of probably-not-very-coherent-or-relevant-to-anyone-but-me verbiage that may not be of very much interest to most folks:
In my first year back in college after four years in the Navy back in - probably 1977 - I took an elective poetry writing course AT UCSD one summer from a man, a poet, whose name I now forget, and although I have a great number of his poems somewhere in all the boxes that comprise my tangible worldly possessions, I can't locate them, nor locate his name with a series of internet searches. The reason I wanted to recall his name was to search out a poem of his that always impressed me in a way relevant to this photographic image below. The poem starts off with a rambling verse about the need he and his wife had to get rid of one of their two cats, due to some new living arrangement. They had a nice cat, and a cat-from-hell. He wanted to get rid of the bad cat, but she thinks the nice one will be welcome in any home, and the that bad one might be mistreated, and that they should therefore keep the bad one ... and his wife won't back down ... which leads to the second verse where he admits she is right for her unyielding attitude, " ... as unyielding as that bronze sky ..." that blanketed from above a house somewhere that they lived in together in Mexico for a while, a house with a courtyard that was a wild tangle of vines that she would never let him remove to plant a garden ... "insisting in that quiet way of yours, that everything had the same right to live as we did ... and that it was a garden".
So, this plant photo below also evokes memories of W. S. Merwin's poem, "Fly," for completely different reasons that any readers still reading can pursue ...
So, the above considerations were sparked by looking at this small, innocent plant this morning, a "Chinese Popwa" that I picked out in a nursery in Bicol province two weeks ago (between episodes of almost-serious heat exhaustion) when we were visiting some of my wife's relatives there - plant enthusiasts all, but not really understanding the fine points of the bonsai addiction - nice women who insisted I get one of these Popwas at the discount price they could bargain for, since they were friends with the nursery owner ... I already have one of these [see elsewhere], much bigger and almost like a "natural" bonsai, but I went along, bought it, brought it home, and decided to tackle it today to make it "fit" into my "bonsai collection".
A bonsai, in its simplest definition is a "Tree in a pot". Some, however, might say it is an "Artistic Tree in a pot," which I think is more accurate. Did I simply put this plant ["Tree"??? - likely not exactly so] in a pot, or did I actually impose or practice some "art" on it, since they don't take to traditional styling I am told, but instead impose their own styling naturally. What I did do, if it can be called "art," was to cut out a few select trunks and such to bring out the natural beauty the tree/bush/plant had already imposed on its growth, and then placed it in a bonsai pot. I kind of like it, I'm almost ashamed to say, but as a "bonsai artist" I am left wondering, as in the Merwin poem, is that what I am? Someone who will pot up and hack away at any old plant in the name of "bonsai"?
Enjoy! (?)
Let me preface the below image with a lot of probably-not-very-coherent-or-relevant-to-anyone-but-me verbiage that may not be of very much interest to most folks:
In my first year back in college after four years in the Navy back in - probably 1977 - I took an elective poetry writing course AT UCSD one summer from a man, a poet, whose name I now forget, and although I have a great number of his poems somewhere in all the boxes that comprise my tangible worldly possessions, I can't locate them, nor locate his name with a series of internet searches. The reason I wanted to recall his name was to search out a poem of his that always impressed me in a way relevant to this photographic image below. The poem starts off with a rambling verse about the need he and his wife had to get rid of one of their two cats, due to some new living arrangement. They had a nice cat, and a cat-from-hell. He wanted to get rid of the bad cat, but she thinks the nice one will be welcome in any home, and the that bad one might be mistreated, and that they should therefore keep the bad one ... and his wife won't back down ... which leads to the second verse where he admits she is right for her unyielding attitude, " ... as unyielding as that bronze sky ..." that blanketed from above a house somewhere that they lived in together in Mexico for a while, a house with a courtyard that was a wild tangle of vines that she would never let him remove to plant a garden ... "insisting in that quiet way of yours, that everything had the same right to live as we did ... and that it was a garden".
So, this plant photo below also evokes memories of W. S. Merwin's poem, "Fly," for completely different reasons that any readers still reading can pursue ...
So, the above considerations were sparked by looking at this small, innocent plant this morning, a "Chinese Popwa" that I picked out in a nursery in Bicol province two weeks ago (between episodes of almost-serious heat exhaustion) when we were visiting some of my wife's relatives there - plant enthusiasts all, but not really understanding the fine points of the bonsai addiction - nice women who insisted I get one of these Popwas at the discount price they could bargain for, since they were friends with the nursery owner ... I already have one of these [see elsewhere], much bigger and almost like a "natural" bonsai, but I went along, bought it, brought it home, and decided to tackle it today to make it "fit" into my "bonsai collection".
A bonsai, in its simplest definition is a "Tree in a pot". Some, however, might say it is an "Artistic Tree in a pot," which I think is more accurate. Did I simply put this plant ["Tree"??? - likely not exactly so] in a pot, or did I actually impose or practice some "art" on it, since they don't take to traditional styling I am told, but instead impose their own styling naturally. What I did do, if it can be called "art," was to cut out a few select trunks and such to bring out the natural beauty the tree/bush/plant had already imposed on its growth, and then placed it in a bonsai pot. I kind of like it, I'm almost ashamed to say, but as a "bonsai artist" I am left wondering, as in the Merwin poem, is that what I am? Someone who will pot up and hack away at any old plant in the name of "bonsai"?
Enjoy! (?)
