The Story of
My Blue Bonsai
When I was a kid my father gave my mother a bonsai Ginkgo tree. I was no Zen Buddhist. I knew nothing of the the ancient art of Bonsai, the spiritual symbolism and significance of meditating on tiny landscapes. I wondered why Dad gave Mom a stick in a bowl of dirt, and whether she was going to be mad.
Around this same time, I began subscribing to mailing lists under the name Blue. Why? I'd like to say I had an early instinct to protect my privacy, but the truth is I just got a kick out of receiving mail and magazines addressed to Blue Pickering. Blue has always been my favorite color. For me, blue is cool and solid. Blue is strong. The right blue can put you in a sober reflection state of mind. It's so much more than sadness and sorrow. Take the blue of open ocean, or the blue of infinite sky. The ocean is so much more than sorrow. The sky isn't sad. But when I am sad, meditating on sky and ocean help me put things in perspective. The vastness of all that has come before, the infinity of things we can do, people we can become, world's we might discover. I am strangely comforted to realize what a small but precious place our tiny selves take up in space and time. Like the tiny trees coaxed and nurtured and meditated over by generations of Buddhist monks.
My mother's Bonsai Ginkgo has bloomed and flourished over the years in it's little bowl of dirt, standing sentinel over a tiny garden of pebbles and beach glass. If properly cared for, bonsai trees can live for centuries, far outlasting their original cultivators. Bonsai trees can show us important things about ourselves, and teach us to value our time and place upon the earth. We lost my father in 2017, but the little tree he gave my mother lives on. It is one of the many gifts he gave us, one of the many lessons he taught.
My Blue Bonsai is a place to nurture healing and creativity. It is a place to imagine and share ideas. Thank you for visiting My Blue Bonsai. Thank you for helping me build something beautiful!
Sincerely,
Lillie Blue