A new year

 

I have always liked tree rings and been slightly fascinated by the way they mark time.   There is a 1300 year old slice of sequoia in the natural history museum .  I just tried to find a picture of it but it has been restored and they have moved the timeline that used to be written on it in tippex to a side panel.  This made me feel a little sad as I used to love the way the dates were written onto the actual tree. An inscription rather than a museum label.  I'm not sure a timeline next to it will do the same thing, it will not read like a calendar. Perhaps they have decided it is more an artifact in its own rite now and needs interpreting from the side.  If I had any say in the matter which luckily I don't I would ask them to carve the dates of events in deep. From a more global perspective, I'm tempted to go and have a look at what part of their interpretation of the past they have chosen to erase.  Will the invention of the steam engine be as important as the destruction of the buffalo? what events will now take precedence in the line of history we can no longer write on the pristine tree trunk that was felled and imported for this very purpose. 

I have not got into the proper flow of things yet but it was good to think about our trees project today and to have a chat about what we believed we were trying to achieve.  I surprise myself sometimes when the blackness come, I feel like an optimist and someone who can look to the bright points and go with a positive flow.  I can also usually find my own place within projects and expand a glade of dappled light that at least for me in the moment makes sense and has value. 

I think this is what we started to do this morning and in some ways if i were to inscribe something into the annular ring of the project there was a moment of growth.  I began to think that through helping to pull some people and strands of thought in a collective direction I could locate myself in a raveling where I began to build on positive contribution and help to shape and create new collective thoughts.  Today I started to understand that doing something was better than doping nothing as long as it wasn't counter productive.  I will inscribe the moment into the annular rings of the project and return to the thought if I hit a future existential crisis.