Emilio Fantin—Dreams of Trees

“The almond carries but one fruit. The green layer around it has already dried and given way to the hard shell with its lines and crevasses. When I touch the almond fruit slightly, it falls into my hand. I weigh it on my palm, put my nose to it and sniff. The fruit smells slightly bitter and sweet, although the edible kernel is still protected by the tight case.

I watch the pattern on the shell. I sink my gaze into it, into the little oval-shaped cosmos with the seed of life inside, a little universe in itself. I watch the lines on the shell-like frozen trajectories of long lost stars. I think: The lines in the almond shell are traces the developing fruit has left in matter. The lights of the celestial bodies are traces the developing universe has carved into space.

(…) The world is born in every moment. What we perceive of it are the traces of this birth, traces of force meeting force and igniting stars on its way, of desire meeting desire and letting flesh growing forth. We look at a cracked rock in the riverbed, the black lines on its neat halves flying through the white flesh of its inside, and we realize that the birth inside of it has been happening for billions of years. We inhale the air around us and within an eyelid’s flutter are we amidst the Big Bang. We are birthing being all the time. This is what is going on here, this is what we are about.

The almond looked at me, an eye full of knowledge that I had always known. The setting sun above the horizon was about to melt into the hilltop. From this act of fusion it would bring back a fresh new day.”

Excerpt from the companion essay to the show “Family Tree” written by Andreas Weber.

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“I have reached for language that has been given to us by the natural world. To take flight and to root, both of which a tree attests to in the upward reach and rootedness of its form. What if we could experience our own rootedness in place or in ground, in its nourishing, moral, communal, generative and/or ancestral aspect, through our relatedness to and experience of the tree and of the forest? Would we continue to be so instrumental in our conceptions if we felt ourselves formed and informed by the tree, the bird, the rock, the river? To imagine the dream of the Almond tree or feel the growth of the Olive tree is to enter the beingness of the tree, to rescue it from its assignation as resource. And if we can imagine the trees’ cries of anguish as fire takes it, or the yearning of its branches towards the light, can we also feel the anguish of the earth, as its forests are felled, its ocean and sky polluted, its depths cut open and mined, its mountains fracked, its soils poisoned and depleted, its rivers dammed. To embrace the mythopoetic as an other lost way of knowing, would it be better to say of the earth, her forests, her ocean, her sky? Could we have given flight to our dreams, imaginations, and ideas, if flight had not been imaged for us by birds? Would we know what it is to endure if we could not feel it in a tree’s standing, in its magnitude and sturdiness? Would we understand how to dance if we did not feel the rise and extenuation of branches, the lightness of leaves as they outpour from their own rootedness below? Could we wing our arms, twist around our own stems? Would we know stillness if it were not for the mountain? Would we have a sense of deep time if it were not for rocks, the movement of water on stone? Would we know mystery if it were not for the night? What should we learn from the small persistent, togetherness of moss? What if we were again to live in companionship with trees, plants, rivers, and mountains?”

Excerpt from the companion essay to the show “To Live in Companionship with Trees, Plants, Rivers and Mountains” by Martine Murray.

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