The title of this project, “Blooming Up”, comes from a story from my childhood…
Smack. I was maybe three or four when a little songbird crashed into our living room window. It died instantly leaving a beautiful print of its feathers on the glass. We buried it in a little patch of garden near the cherry tree where I helped plant tulips and hyacinths. I was allowed to keep the print on the glass for a while. I remember sitting inside, studying the intricate pattern left by the feathers, my breath condensing on the glass and giving the print a sort of ghostly life. Weeks went by, watching the cherry tree come into blossom and flowers start to pop up, until I finally asked, “When is that bird going to bloom up?”
The story lingered in my family as a sweet bit of childish silliness. But all these years later I can still feel the tender relationship I had with that ghost-bird. The question still echoes for me as more than just the surreal idea of a bird blooming up like a tulip! And never more than this year, with so much on the line for our society, our biosphere and our climate:
Can something good bloom up out of sadness and sorrow and death?
From this grim moment, can we turn things around for people and for the planet?