continuum...

there is a tree in Paris that is a testament to the tarrying nexus of time, to the soffit spectrum of survival spiralling through hundreds of millions of years...
the end of another year has me thinking of this singular tree, as I had once watched its leaves radiate a glowing yellow before spinning wordlessly down to the ground...
I picked up a few of these gilded leaves so perfectly bifurcated and so strangely primordial, their cell structure interlaced with mysterious knowledge from so long ago when the world had no human eyes, no human touch...
China has since claimed it as her national tree, but I claim it as poetic justice that it may just keep going on long after countries and people have dissolved away like so many new year's resolutions!

"Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten
Meinem Garten anvertraut,
Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten,
Wie's den Wissenden erbaut."*

[*first verse of "Gingo Biloba" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815]
[this particular gingko biloba specimen flourishes in the park beside the Petit Palais]

Je vous souhaite de joyeuses fêtes ainsi qu'une belle et sage année 2010!