This is a Blog in Defense of Fiction in the Name of DNA.

This is a Cherry Tree

This is not a story about imagination.

Yes, really. You might not think so, because this seems to be a story about imagination, but it isn't.

This is a cherry tree; you can tell by the trunk with brown, shiny bark and notches. The cherry tree's leaves are long and have little edges that look like eyelashes. Its leaves are shiny, oval-shaped, and have a pointy tip with jagged edges. Every year, the cherry tree looks more like an umbrella you can hide under. The tree's flowers are either white or pink and grow closely together. In spring, light green berries grow in the clusters. These berries turn into the round fruit we all know.

Stories

there are cherries

that wish they tasted like plums, so sometimes they pretend to be

and there are plums

that wish they tasted like cherries

they disappear into white clouds

they make up stars made of snow

Inspired by poet Federico García Lorca

So you find yourself in front of an old, worn-out door. There are big cracks in the glass of the small window. You don't know why, but there's something about this door that pulls you in.A strange feeling  goes through you as you reach out to hold the cold doorknob. You pull, and the door creaks open. You see a room ahead and you feel drawn in like a magnet. Step by step, you walk on the creaky floor and enter the room.

Do you get it now?

You almost slip on some shiny fluid that came out of an imaginary hole in the wall. Just imagine trying to stop the leak with all the buckets in the house. All this make-belief fluid. It seeps through the cracks of our world like the spider you eat once a year because you sleep with your mouth open, like the memory you never had but got from pictures - from stories others told, like the fairy tales stuck in your mind like scraps of food in your belly, like the cherry orchard you daydream of when sitting in a room on a rainy day with bags under your eyes from the scary things that visited you at night as you watched them performing a dance show for you.

And sometimes, well, sometimes this world seems real, sensible, and practical. Then someone might say, 'but, um, Sofie, a cherry tree is a real thing, right?' That's true. But I'm not saying cherry trees aren't real. So, do you also believe me when I say I can imagine them?

This is a cherry tree. The realest one.

Written by Sofie de Vroom

This blog was written to inspire You and announce wonderful workshops in April, from meditative drawing to using your voice as art, to collaborations with the wonderful NASHI collective. Feel free to join us and get inspired on the Sunday Sessions.

For more information:

https://www.dna-artclub.com/workshops/the-zen-of-drawing-iii (event closed)

https://www.dna-artclub.com/workshops/your-voice-is-art (event closed)

Click here for more events

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