Fic: Observations, Ch 97

[anon_j_anon]

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[geminispaz65]

We have a ginkgo tree in our front yard. It's really interesting to learn those little facts about it in your annotation, I never really knew anything about them. They are very beautiful, the only downside is that the...seeds, I guess, smell terrible when you step on them. We call them stinkbombs, have all our lives, because the tree's been there for the 30 years my family has lived in the house.

Still, that's pretty awesome :D

[treia24]

Oh wow, you've yet again hit one of my major nerd-out obsessions. My hometown is covered in ginko trees,and I love the shape of the leves, so I spent a while rsearching them recently.
Did you know, they used to grow wild in Europe and North America? But, they went extinct in those areas long enough ago that westerners only knew of them from fossils. It wasn't until a European recognized one in a Japanese temple garden (where, I'm farly certain, they are not native; they were imported from China if I remember correctly) that anyone outside of Asia knew they still existed.

[cockrobinisdead]

For reasons unknown, as we walked I imagined two trees at the opposite ends of a city, charred black. All around them was a wasteland, a place of shadow and ash. By all appearances, the two trees were dead. But with the first rains of a new growing season, they sprouted green and gold leaves. No one witnessed the rebirth. There was no one left to record the miracle. But each year the trees sprouted until they put forward a full canopy of translucent leaves. They stood, green and gold, at the edge of forever.

what an incredible passage, for so many reasons. Spock's metaphorical imagination and the enduring image of hope not only for Spock and Kirk, but also hope for the wasteland that is NYC, even if only a metaphorical hope.

[larry_v_freddie]

We have a ginkgo tree in our back yard. Only the one, though. It's fucking gorgeous in the fall, when it turns yellow. And then all of the leaves fall off, and the ground in a ten foot circle around the tree is bright yellow.

[star1anna]

The image at the end of this chapter, the two ginko trees, surviving unknown in the city at the edge of forever is so beautiful and hopeful for new life but also so sad. The space between the trees that are supposed to grow in pairs, and the way no one finds them, just creates this feeling of, almost, emptiness that really gives life to the story of the desolation of the city in new ways. Nearly a crying moment.