https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/23/ginkgo/
"Pressed between the pages of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — a favorite
book of my childhood, which my grandmother used to read to me and which still
dwells in her immense library — is a single yellow leaf, its curved fan almost
glowing against a faded illustration of the White Rabbit gazing anxiously at
his pocket watch.
I still remember the afternoon I picked it up from under the four majestic
ginkgo trees standing sentinel at the northern entrance of Varna’s Sea Garden —
the iconic park perched on the cliffs of the Black Sea in my father’s hometown,
where my grandparents took me each summer; I still remember the shock of seeing
something so strange and beautiful, so unlike my notion of a leaf, and then the
gasp of revelation: I suddenly realized that anything — a leaf, a life — can
take myriad shapes beyond the standard template, can bend and broaden the
Platonic ideal.
The improbable presence of four ancient trees native to Asia in Communist
Bulgaria is a microcosm of the story of the ginkgo itself."
Via Joyce Donahue.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
