Flow with ink, breath, paper in one of my upcoming workshops. To start, strengthen, or sustain a creative journaling or meditation practice, reach out about a virtual 1:1 session. As always, listen to these essays here, and pair your creative practice with a journal or card from Odette Press.
Even the oldest of trees continues its wonderful labor.
Hummingbird lives in one of them.
He’s there for the white blossoms, and the secrecy.
The blossoms could be snow, with a dash of pink.
At first the fruit is small and green and hard.
Everything has dreams, hope, ambition.
— Mary Oliver, a selection from “Someday”
A thin line of words branch out; a sentence, shaped together from the graphite tendril as the shape of wish moves across the smooth page to form. Letters, growing, to words, conjure up the imagery of that which I want most for everyone. Peace white, graphite shining, I stand silent save for the slight dance of moving pencil.
On a Winter Friday I walk into the dark wooden hallway guided by cascading daylight, as afternoon sun pour into a green-laden room. Entering into sublime space and subdued sound, I listen as silence unfolds into sound, as if sound were bud, and the room around us the stem, the leaves, the moment flowering. Wood floors hold worn, rich, evergreen walls, darkened in corners by a room arched as if setting sun or the slow, serene slope of a half moon. There, under the half moon of room are the curve of leaves like smiles, and iron lines of black metal, while light, pouring in through thin windows, catches glimmers on ambient dust, gliding off the sheen of leaves, making shadows into shades of gold and olive.
In February, I stand in Manhattan at the Park Avenue Armory surrounded by this temporary forest: Wish Tree, an installation by Yoko Ono, in honor of her ninety-second birthday. Magnolia trees, held in boxes, are whispers of a nearby landscape, still and steady next to drying pine. Eyes opening wide take in a vision of ninety-two trees.
Imagine. You enter into a wide, expansive room, and trace your feet across the sheen of wooden floors. The moment speaks of landscape, of aspiration, of trees and connection, infusing an understanding of a time where connection and duration are both ingredients — a lesson on impermanence that the piece is only open, and therefore experienced, for the span of those four days. Surrounded by the histories of the Armory walls, you meander and wander through the room, situated as forest, and make your way into the subdued sound of the room. Green leaves and green peeling paint meet with drying pine and the shine of magnolia, punctuated by bright, white tables for writing, with benches and chairs for resting placed around the room’s periphery. Peace white cards with thin, white string lay in piles next to boxes of small, white pencils. Writing your wish, connecting graphite to page, then page to the leaves, you make the piece living; in that moment, your attention is the thread, and your intention is the offering as you write, tying your wishes to the silent, steady branches.
Rooted in time, connection, and continuity, with spaces like this held around the globe since 1996, Wish Tree is an ongoing piece, made, like much of Ono’s work, in the moment, created in the act of participating, in the nature of relating. In the 1960’s, Ono began creating “instruction paintings,” — pieces of work by which the encounter is the artwork, the performance is performed by space and the viewer, and the work is, therefore, incomplete without the participation of community or audience. Her work is dynamic, in that it comes alive in relationship; that it takes us, as viewers, making momentary community to activate the process.
Like our relating to trees, Wish Tree is a moment that infuses the room with teachings of interdependence. The instruction is simple:
Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of the wish tree. Ask your friend to do the same. Keep wishing.
You bring yourself, and the threads of whatever you wish for, and write. Graphite meets paper, and you infuse your aspirations into the fabric of time, taking the thin strings and releasing your wish to the earth alongside all wishes of anyone else who enters the space. Wishes straddle the divide between personal and communal: sentences pine for peace and love, and many want for jobs, for the meeting of basic needs. Wishes for that which is intimate and shared dance between the abstract and tangible, and you gather your attention as a meditation toward that which you are creating, releasing them to branch as if exhalation. Imagining, you begin to view your wish as a thread, shared and made stronger in the company of many.
Paper, leaf, room, tree. Feeling the heaviness of the year, I went as a gesture to the heart of myself, walking through the doors to seek much of what the piece has become a beacon for: a solace, a stillness, a silence, a moment in time to dream and imagine, to be reminded of the power of peace in an anchor of wish. What I remember most was the feeling of being moved by the quiet, serene power. How my mouth expanded from bud to leaf; to form from still line to awe, the smile of growing moon. Standing still inside the activity of the city, held inside a warmth of architecture, low lights, and history, the moment spoke to the power of art and connecting. Outside, February howled and headlines that were devastating, while inside, the room that day was sublime; in the middle of a dense and fast city, a whole room stood still and filled with the awe, writing strings of sentences on paper.
The power of Wish Tree, is in the peace and quiet, yet is nonetheless impactful. What rang out, and moved me to silent tears, was how deeply and profoundly human the wishes, were tied quietly to the end of the trees. I wish my crush would text me back. One read. I wish the government would stop embarrassing itself, shared another. Love many wrote, turning to graphite to make the long and winding wish for world peace. If a wish is felt, or witnessed, or if a tear falls in a room next to a tree, does the tree grow? I wondered, and wept, picturing the present escalation of deforestation, feeling for the rapid decimation of fields and fields and fields of forests, returning attention to imagining, a vision for the peace of trees. Make a wish. Write it down, the instructions said. Keep wishing.
For a birthday, we make a wish. You take an idea, hold it in your mind, and imagine. You make a wish, and blow out a candle: fire catches, sparking blazes, and wax burns, and smoke carries tendrils of the idea or intention out across atmosphere, into the space you breathe into, into room beyond the room, your aspirations reaching upward into sky and atmosphere, into the lungs of canopies and people everywhere. Open the half moon, awe-filled, growing almonds of your wishing eyes, feel the pulse of your breathing heartbeat, recognize your wish as an insistence for living. You inhale your aspiration, then exhale. A wish is a kernel, a seed, a starting place, and then from there we ground, and with our steady focus and tending, then we bring life into action, and imagination becomes realized.
What might the world look like if we all walked around with our words forward, our wishes? My sense is it would humanize us, or my hope is that it could, and my sense is that with focus and attention, it can. Art at best is a catalyst: it strikes us, moves us, can ring out like a bell, yet to be moved is to be willing to be open to the moment and present to feeling. Art can provide, provoke, can give perspective, and when crafted well, is generous in its ability to not divide, but to inform, evoke, and connect. Magnolia, leaves the shapes of eyes, pine, the shape of tendrils, these wishes, this piece broke open the hard of heart, which is to say, moved me, which is the power of art: to inspire, to inhale, to break open, and unfold the leaf of space of feeling, to wake us up in the process.
If a tree sings a song, or falls, do we hear it, and listen? What is a wish, if not an incantation, a hope we speak down, a bringing forward, an ongoingness, an act of reflection and intention? A desire between something that lives within you, and a vision of bringing it out, for yourself and each other, a leaf growing into the world. Wish Tree rings out for me like a bell; graphite and ink and wishes stretch out across time, and writing can be a space for imagination, and the power of Ono’s work has, throughout time, been one that brings together. I think of the power of peace, of quiet and writing, how sentence and situation can both be seed and wish, a catalyst and grounds for creating, and I wonder, what do you wish for?
As I write this, magnolias unfold the skyline into color. They are pink and deep at the root, white and opening as they open toward the sky, as green edges of branches an soft grass push up through grounds across the city. I have warmed to the season, to idea. I open arms like leaf and wings, and what was harsh and hardened in winter starts to thaw, and the leaves support the flowers, and petals cup around color as if hands or growing smiles as wing supports bird, leaf supports flower, and each is a part of something.
A singing bowl struck out sounds across my memory and many weathers have formed and left since February, yet when I quiet I can still sip from the feeling of that day. Over a million wishes have been gathered and planted at the base of the Imagine Peace Tower, a monument in honor of John Lennon. That love, like art, like leaf, like flowering, is a space for connecting and creating, not destroying.
Still, the resonance of pine, paper, and peace, the silence of that day remains. Quiet, steady, and strong, the trees bathe us wordlessly, and we breathe oxygen and the continuity of leaves, and trees. Meanwhile, sunlight grows.
Can what we do, make, create sing from the palms of our fingertips and the wings of our hands provide the warmth for life’s opening? A smile to meet the harshness. A power in word, in thought, in togetherness, in peace. Cupping idea, grounding down to paper, I plant the seed, bring idea to form. Keep Wishing, I think, then write:
Peace, love, warmth, food, housing, shelter for all.
Nourished By, Nourishing:
Travel, and light, and conversations with and a run along Lake Michigan. More on Wish Tree here, and here. Reading more on deforestation here.
