A Bloom in the Womb

Folks may be thinking that we disappeared from the planet, or at least from our creative projects. The second half of 2006 has been full of change and continuing transformation for the 7Adinkras artists (what year isn’t!?). On my own journey, I’ve relocated from Atlanta, GA back to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ. I could say that after making my film piece Hoo Hoo: Losing Mother Tongue that I was inspired to return to my family and immerse myself back into my Chinese heritage -- yes, that is true, and it is also true that I was short of having a nervous breakdown in Atlanta and needed a place to regroup. So… back to the womb.

This fall I teamed with my Gong Gong (my maternal grandfather) to revive my Hoo Hoo’s abundant backyard garden and her plentiful kitchen. Through plenty of sweat, blisters, and intergenerational bickering, yes! we have a backyard full of Hoo Hoo’s heirloom bok choy, Chinese broccoli, spinach, snow peas, and green onions, as well as my additions of several varieties of kale, lettuce, and herbs.

I’ve wanted to plant a garden ever since I nurtured a small plot in my college years, and at long last I am exercising my green thumb -- and literally feeding people, which is what we’d like all of our creative projects to do, yes?

Working in Hoo Hoo’s garden, I marvel that I have become more attuned with Mother Nature, able to note the change in wind, the angle of sun, the ripening of fruit, whereas before I didn’t know what matured in what season, only that when I was hungry, Hoo Hoo stuck a big bowl of steaming greens in front of me. Or gave me a Ziploc bag of fresh jujubes or kumquats.

But without her physical presence, I am coming to know her secrets, her rhythms, her close relationship with Earth -- how to love the soil into overrunning bounty.

We can too often, too easily, become frightened or jealous that others may take the abundance that should be ours, or perhaps steal our ideas -- this notion that there is not enough… But look at a tree that produces fruit, say, my Hoo Hoo’s jujube (Chinese date) tree, which produces hundreds of small, egg-shaped, crunchy-appley-sweet, yellow-red fruits in the late summer. Every one of those jujube pits can produce another tree with hundreds of more fruits.

Everyone who “consumes” an artist’s work is seeded with an inspiration that can be transformed into a creative project. Some seeds grow, some seeds don’t. And those that do, with much light and nurturing, can grow into highly fruitful projects that seed and feed countless others. It’s endless!

As with Mother Nature, we creatives go through cycles of bloom and dormancy -- both of which are absolutely necessary to our work. I’ve been doing a lot of inner processing, with not much outward production unless you count the garden -- hmm, and why shouldn’t we count the garden? At any rate, I am extremely grateful for this time I’ve had in quiet contemplation and trust that what fruits I have to offer in the future will be that much sweeter for what I am learning and how I am choosing to define myself now.