the sourcerer: The Magnolia Tree Next Door.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Magnolia Tree Next Door.

Magnolia grandiflora or Bull Bay.

Beloved by songbirds. The seed is enclosed in a bright red, fleshy aril with a high fat content. It provides migrating birds with much needed energy as they fly South.

Beloved by the birds and wildlife that stay behind, as they find shelter in it's dense green foliage.

Beloved by the beetles who pollinate the flowers. A food source high in protein. Pollinated by beetles, because these trees have been around for twenty million years, long before the birth of bees.

Beloved by me, when I laugh at the capers of the squirrels as they bounce from branch to branch. I look down at the tree from the window in my bedroom and see the pointed buds form. I am astonished by the blossoms as they unfurl to the size of dinner plates. One flower perfumes an entire room. A fallen creamy petal carries the scent. Even this seed cone is fragrant in a woodsy kind of way.

Magnolia Tree!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: oohh Lily- LOVE the shop! xxx; May 29, 2012 at 7:01 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.