A few thoughts from some human members of its family

Leaves of grass, as they were once called….

Stalks sprouting from a common bulb of artistic imaginings

The act of looking at these fragile and fleeting natural elements through the literary or filmic lens:

To become aware of the vulnerability of our human “material”,
of the tenuous yet necessary bond between us and others.

To look more closely at our companions in the real world.

An invitation to cast the net wider.
A day at a time
For the next 8 days
And every day after

ON THE EVE OF EARTH DAY 2017

“A DENSE, INTRICATE MIRACLE”…

“Beyond another field on the other side, the forest lay like a dark-green, almost black shawl, extending from the dissolving hill in the distance … Once inside, the darkness proved to be a trick that the forest—assuming its magician incarnation, like its companion, the hill, which was trying to become invisible—habitually performed for everyone outside its boundaries … The hide-and-seek light, the unending series of sal (trees), a whole different world hidden so openly within the shell of the soiled one they knew—all the things these city boys had never experienced before—silence even Shekhar and Sommath.

Their ears opened not to silence, but to what they had derided a few minutes ago: the music of the forest … They walked as if in a trance, spellbound in this kingdom of magic, until, with a snap up above and then a fluttering descent, a small, flowering branch landed near them. They stared at it as if it had come from outer space….

…Ajit lifted up the branch from the ground and all three looked at the cluster of flowers in silence: an inflorescence of fully bloomed, small, coral-pink flowers, with a contained explosion of anthers in the middle and, under them, alternate rows of greenish buds that looked like fruits, invisible when on the tree except as a spray of hazy yellowish-orange tint on the canopies, so easily ignored or not noticed but now, on closer inspection, a dense, intricate miracle”.

Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others (London, Vintage Books, 2015), p. 401-403.

 

Take a walk; experience the magic and miracle of the forest(s) nearby.

Write your own encounter with their flowers—real and imagined, in bloom or in bud.