Capturing the Ginkgo Light

" . . . GOLDEN AND GREEN
LEAVES LITTER THE LAWN TODAY THAT YESTERDAY
HAD SPREAD ALOFT THEIR FLUTTERING FANS OF LIGHT."
~~ HOWARD NEMEROV ~~
Golden paintings, here and above, by Leonard Orr

Artist Leonard Orr says:
"None of my paintings are titled;
most can also be hung in any orientation
(there is no top or bottom, left or right;
I paint turning the painting again and again,
holding it up in the air and tilting the canvases
to let the wet paint flow in different directions;
I have ruined many clothes!)."
Looking at these paintings, I sense the ethereal light of the delicately ribbed, fan-like ginkgo leaf, that changes so suddenly from green to gold. Not only are the colors perfectly autumnal (as in "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"), but the background textures, so much like a palimpsest, remind me of ancient Chinese calligraphy, fitting right in with the Oriental heritage and folklore of the ginkgo tree. Did the trees thrive naturally or were they planted and preserved for many centuries by Chinese monks who later introduced them to Japan?

I have long been an admirer of the Ginkgo biloba [i.e., bi-lobed], this unique species of tree with no living relatives and leaves like no other. Way back in the Spring of 1972, I pasted ginkgo leaves (found on the Lindenwood campus in St. Charles, Missouri) into the pages of my 9th grade leaf collection.

a page from my scrapbook
38 - year - old ginkgo leaf
page from Goethe's scrapbook
195 - year - old ginkgo leaf
The great Goethe also admired the ginkgo, and preserved yet today in the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf are the above leaves that he himself dried and attached to his love poem "Ginkgo biloba" in 1815. Of the unusual bi - lobed leaves, Goethe has written:

This leaf from a tree in the East . . .

Does it represent One living creature
Which has divided itself?
Or are these Two, which have decided,
That they should be as One?

Wolfgang Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
Prolific German writer, poet, scientist, botanist, and philosopher

When living in Philadelphia, many years after my leaf collection, I encountered ginkgos at every turn: there were the stately, historical ginkgos on the grounds of Bartram's Garden, Woodlands Cemetery, and University City New School; the middle-aged ginkgos lining Lancaster Avenue; and the younger generation, visible from every window on the south side of our house.

Two Proud Ginkgos on Beaumont Avenue, Philadelphia
Not long ago I mentioned an old childhood classic, The Witch Family on my book blog. This little novel ~~ also an October favorite for Halloween ~~ contains the following descriptive ginkgo passage, which I can appreciate even more, now that I have lived in a tall brick city house, just like Amy's:

"Amy's house was a high red brick one. In front of it there was a tall and graceful ginkgo tree whose roots made the worn red bricks of the sidewalk bulge and whose branches fanned the sky. The ginkgo tree has little leaves shaped like fans that Amy and Clarissa liked to press and give to their dolls. The fruit of this tree is orange, but it is not good for eating. It has an odd fragrance that grownups do not like but that children do not mind, for it makes them think of fall and Halloween" (14, The Witch Family, Eleanor Estes).

Poet Eve Merriam also pays tribute to the urban ginkgo, in "Willow and Ginkgo," her poem of comparison and contrast:

"The ginkgo forces its way through gray concrete;
Like a city child, it grows up in the street.
Thrust against the metal sky,
Somehow it survives and even thrives.
My eyes feast upon the willow,
But my heart goes to the ginkgo."

by Eve Merriam (1916 - 1992)
American Poet
Winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, 1946

City Children
(Ben at the wheel / Sam, back seat driver)
Fallen Ginkgo Fruit [seeds, actually]
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
As little Amy observes, the large fleshy seed is indeed malodorous and not well-liked, certainly not something that you want to inadvertently squash and carry into the house on the bottom of your shoe! However, if you can live and let live, the plump, pungent little nuisance has its own peculiar charm and is not all that hard to abide. A common Chinese name for the ginkgo tree elevates the fruity seed to an object of beauty, translating poetically into English as Silver Apricot. How lovely!

In his mystical sonnet, "The Consent," American poet Howard Nemerov writes in wonderment of the quickly turning Ginkgos:

. . . on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

by Howard Nemerov (1920 - 1991)
American Poet
1978 Pulitzer Prize Winner

Another tribute to the tenacity and longevity of the ginkgo is Arthur Sze's seven - part, evocative poem about existence and endurance, "The Ginkgo Light." Inspired by the half dozen noble ginkgo trees to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Sze writes:

A 1300-year-old lotus seed germinates; a ginkgo
issues fan-shaped leaves; each hour teems. . . .

love has no near or far

. . . a temple in Hiroshima . . .
disintegrates, while it's ginkgo

buds after the blast. . . .

As light skews across our faces, we are
momentarily blinded, and, directionless,

have every which way to go. . . .

and while we listen to our exhale, inhale,
ephemera become more enduring than concrete.

Ginkgos flare out. . . .

One brisk morning,
we snap to layers of overlapping

fanned leaves scattered on the sidewalk . . .
finger a scar on wrist, scar on abdomen.

by Arthur Sze, Chinese American poet (b. 1950)
from his book The Ginkgo Light


Goethe, Estes, Merriam, Nemerov, Sze -- what do all these writers have in common? Their hearts go out to the ginkgo, the tree of the ages; and so do ours. No wonder paleobotanist Albert Seward once said that the ginkgo "appeals to the historic soul: we see it as an emblem of changelessness, a heritage from worlds too remote for our human intelligence to grasp, a tree which has in its keeping the secrets of the immeasurable past" (British botanist and geologist, 1863 - 1941).

Additional links for more information on this fascinating tree:

Ginkgo biloba

Ginkgo history

FYI: The standard spelling appears to be GINKGO (with the "k" before the final "g"); but most dictionaries allow -- in fact practically encourage! -- use of the alternative GINGKO (with the second "g" before the "k"). You pick! See dictionary.com

Archived posts for further reading:
29 November 2009: Ginkgo Biloba
3 December 2009: Willow and Ginkgo

And there's always
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts

Next Fortnightly Post Topic:
Basil:Ocimum basilicum
Coming Thursday, October 28, 2010
See you then!

Butterfly Collection

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My only sketch, profile of heaven is a large blue sky,
larger than the biggest I have seen in June --
and in it are my friends -- all of them -- every one them."
~ Emily Dickinson ~
[small original acrylic painted by friend Dot Menard, in 1977]
"Hey, Summertime!" What is it about butterflies? We can't seem to resist chasing, catching, collecting, displaying, even planting flowers especially to attract them. A number of butterfly images still linger in my mind from childhood, particularly the mid - 60s Coca Cola song and television ad in which a carefree girl swings on a rope way out over the edge of a creek:

"Birds and bees and all the flowers and trees,
Fishes on the line,
Girls and guys and yellow butterflies
Saying 'Hello summertime.'
Ice-cold Coke on the back of my throat
Saying "Hello summertime.
Hey summertime, hey summertime
You and me and summertime
It's the Real Thing." (emphasis added)

Okay, that was television, but there are recollections from books as well, such as the magical luna moths that appear in both Then There Were Five (follow-up to The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright) and A Girl of the Limberlost (Hoosier classic by Gene Stratton-Porter). More recently, Up From Jericho Tel (by award winning novelist E. L. Konigsburg) contains not only a ceremonial burial for a stricken luna moth -- "Fly. Fluttter. Falter. Fall" -- but also the secret password: "Papillon!"

And speaking of Papillon! who could forget this little poem:

"Non. That means no.
Oui. That means yes.
And papillon. That means butterfly.
Oui, non, Papillon -- a very pretty rhyme."

from The Witch Family
by Eleanor Estes (1906 - 1988)
American Children's Author
Newbery Medalist & Honor Recipient

(In addition to the butterfly poem, The Witch Family also features the amazingly literate bumblebee: Malachi the Spelling Bee, a very impressive character indeed!)

A few years later into my collection came Butterflies Are Free, a 1972 film (based on a 1969 play of the same title by American playwright Leonard Gershe, 1922 - 2002). The movie stars Goldie Hawn as Jill, and Edward Albert (son of Eddie from Green Acres fame) as Don. I didn't go to many movies back in those days, but this one I did see at the cinema in 1973. I also saw the play performed live at a St. Louis dinner theatre in 1975, with Angela Cartwright (from Make Room for Daddy & Lost in Space) cast as the female lead. Goldie Hawn, so charming, would be a hard act for anyone, even Angela, to follow, but still I remember both versions favorably.

The title derives from Jill's favorite quotation: "I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies." When she claims that these words are from Mark Twain, Don politely points out that, in fact, Skimpole is not a Twain character but a Dickens character, from the novel Bleak House. Silly Jill; she's such an airhead!

Running through my mind along with the Coca Cola song is the tune that Don sings to Jill (music & lyrics by American musical theatre composer Stephen Schwartz, b. 1948):

"I knew the day you met me
I could love you if you let me
Though you touched my check
And said how easy you'd forget me
You said Butterflies Are Free
And so are we."



















Additional items in my Butterfly Collection include
1. the fanciful pictures above and below
by author and illustrator Cooper Edens, known for his whimsical artistry (see Green Tiger Press / Laughing Elephant)

2. this 1969 favorite from John Denver:

Catch Another Butterfly
Do you remember days not so very long ago
When the world was run by people twice your size?
And the days were full of laughter
And the nights were full of stars
And when you grew tired you could close your eyes

Yes the stars were there for wishing
And the wind was there for kites
And the morning sun was there for rise and shine
And even if the sniffles kept you
Home from school in bed
You couldn't hardly stay there after nine

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

Do you remember campouts right in your own backyard?
Wondering how airplanes could fly
And the hours spent just playin'
With a funny rock you found
With crystal specks as blue as all the sky

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

Now I watch my son, he's playin' with his toys
He's happy, I give him all I can
But I can't help feelin'
Just a little tingly inside
When I hear him say he wants to be a man

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

lyrics & music by John Denver (1943 – 1997)
born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.
American singer - songwriter
Poet Laureate of Colorado, 1977



















3. this #5 hit from 1966:

Elusive Butterfly
You might wake up some mornin'
To the sound of something moving past your window in the wind
And if you're quick enough to rise
You'll catch a fleeting glimpse of someone's fading shadow
Out on the new horizon
You may see the floating motion of a distant pair of wings
And if the sleep has left your ears
You might hear footsteps running through an open meadow

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love

You might have heard my footsteps
Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind
I might have even called your name
As I ran searching after something to believe in
You might have seen me runnin'
Through the long-abandoned ruins of the dreams you left behind
If you remember something there
That glided past you followed close by heavy breathin'

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love

lyrics & music by Bob Lind (b. 1942)
born Robert Neale Lind
American singer - songwriter

4. and to conclude, another brief
poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Butterfly upon the Sky,
That doesn't know its Name
And hasn't any tax to pay
And hasn't any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that's the way to grieve --

*************************
5. Oui, non, Papillon!


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Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

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THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com