Tree Time
This olive tree was young in 3000BC. Before the pyramids were built in Egypt, before the stone circles were built in what we call Spain and England it stretched itself down through the dry soil of what is now Palestine to find water. This tree, Al Badawi, has lived for two hundred and fifty human generations. It continues to grow and yield an enormous crop of olives close to the place that became famous a mere hundred generations ago as Bethlehem. A Palestinian farmer sleeps at Al Badawi’s roots every night to protect it from harm, since Israeli farmers have destroyed many Palestinian-owned olive trees. https://www.urbanforestdweller.com/in-holy-land-protecting-one-of-the-worlds-oldest-olive-trees-is-a-24-7-job/).
What do they dream of I wonder, the tree and the farmer. A time without bombs or genocide, I would hope. [Note here: To get actual news about Gaza and Ukraine, Congo and Sudan I follow journalists who are there. Al Jazeera is a good place to start, but there are other reliable sources too. I find mainstream media to be utterly unreliable. Use discernment.]
I think of a thousand human generations, one life lived through all of that history. In the world that Al Badawi grows her olives each year the perpetrated human dramas, however tragic and appalling must happen in a blink. Maybe. But we know that trees react to environmental stress; this era will be written in her rings.
Scottish artist Katie Patterson has a fascinating art project called The Future Library https://www.futurelibrary.no/. On her website she writes, “Future Library has nature, the environment at its core – and involves ecology, the interconnectedness of things, those living now and still to come. It questions the present tendency to think in short bursts of time, making decisions only for us living now….” Unpublished manuscripts by contemporary authors are stored in a beautifully, thoughtfully designed ‘Silent Room’ on the top floor of an Oslo library. The room faces a forest that has been planted specifically to make the paper on which these books will be printed in 2114, a hundred years from now. Most of us will be gone by then, but the generations to come will make it so. What a thought. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/14/future-library-opens-secret-archive-of-unseen-texts-in-oslo
In the past five years my parents have both left their bodies behind; Dad in the spring of 2019 and mom in January 2022. I hadn’t expected to experience a cellular-level change in the years since their deaths, but there is no playbook for the passing of your folks; I suspect it’s different for everyone. I have taken some time, and time has taken me into new places through this period of growth and decay we call grief. New vistas open just as older stories dwindle and sigh toward their final paragraph. I can see the change in my studio work, my writing, in the new media, the new curiosities that call me forward.
New perspectives too, washed clean by the emotional waves. I’m curious about the active differences between inheritance and legacy. Is it choice, I wonder. Also I wonder about the ideas we cling to as though they define us. They do not. This, after watching Dad navigate dementia, but still fully present as himself. Memory, like main stream media, is unreliable.
NEW WORK: I will launch a new show at my studio in Hamilton in early March 2024. The show has been called many things over the two years of its making, but the final title is Tree Time (I’ll post details here and in Substack, on Insta and facebook in the coming weeks). The paintings are about the people of Ukraine and Russia, Sudan, The Congo and now Palestine and Israel. About us, since conflicts that affect us all.
UPDATE, as of FEB 6: I have been called to assist family in Kingston for what was initially the first week, but will now be all of February 2024. This will delay the Tree Time paintings show at my studio by three or four weeks. Working dates are now March 22-24 and 29-31 (Easter Weekend), with private shows and talks through the weeks between. If you are interested in seeing the work and chatting with me, let me know in the contact form below or at keira@keiramcarthur.ca, and use Tree Time Studio Show in the subject heading. Thanks for your understanding re the show’s delay.
As without, so within. May we each choose our legacy with compassion, discernment and Grace.