Page 33 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2018Q1

photographs focus on parts in ways that heighten to me of something beyond adversity, of suffering. The famous
appreciation and stimulate reflection. Figure 10 In Training begins with a haiku. A form in which the
focuses on abstract form in a manner reminiscent richness of what is unsaid, of sparseness and ellipsis, white pine that
of a Franz Klein painting, while in Figure 11, we are is as powerful as what is said. The choice for the final
drawn to the capacity of texture to denote age and image in the book, Figure 14, is simply inspired. With survived the
connote struggle. The final three images that I would its ethereal beauty it is the perfect complement to bombing of
like to highlight, evoke very different but equally Hagedorn’s poetic afterward.
affecting emotional responses. The images of the Reactions to this work have been unlike those that Hiroshima, a gift
white pine, Figures 12 and 13, present this famous I have encountered. Readers speak of feelings and
tree that survived the bombing of Hiroshima—a gift insights, of the emotive as well as the cognitive. They of the Yamaki
of the Yamaki family—speak of the alternative realities connect to different aspects of the experience of these
that so often coexist in our emotional experience. images, of these bonsai. As I pondered this work, it family, conveys
Figure 12 conveys incredible strength and resolve. It is occurred to me just how thoroughly meditative my strength and
powerful and enduring, both because of its history of experience was. Hence the title “Are they, the images,
survival and because it also is symbolic of the monu- meditations?” I will also admit to asking, with no resolve.
mentally healing power of human generosity and particular spirituality in mind “Are they prayers?”
forgiveness. Figure 13 is one of the most powerfully
affecting images I have encountered. The bark spoke

Preceding page, top; Figure 11
Cedrus atlantica/Blue Atlas
Cedar
In training since 1976

Preceding page, bottom and this
page, top; Figures 12 and 13
Pinus parviflora “Miyajima”/
Japanese White Pine

Bottom; Figure 14
Kusamono/Sumac Accent
plant

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