I went to look at the Botanical garden in Madrid, it seemed like a good compromize to get educated in a low-key way. I’ve never seen so many bonsais before.

I think there’s something perverted about the art of growing bonsai trees. The strict controlling of the tree with all of the pruning, bending and weighing, yet the beauty of something that has really struggled to stay alive. The fact that this exists points a finger at something which I believe is to be very human, a kind of neurosis, yet which I can not put into words.

…

I have a conspiracy theory, and it’s that we are culturally afraid of trees. They are bigger than us, older, and the way they move and sound can sometimes deeply scare us. We don’t understand them, yet we are so dependent of these giants.

I think that’s hard for us to accept.

I think that is why we take a pleasure in cutting them down, pretending like the Earth doesn’t belong to them and sanding them into smooth, soft and straight surfaces for our coffee cups. But they will outlive us, and we do our best to put that out of our minds.

I remember when I lived in a cabin alone once and storms made the forest around me roar in the dark nights. Never have I felt so small like I did then, fearing that a tree would fall on the cabin and hurt me. It would have absolutely crushed everything.

And I must admit that I have also had thoughts of getting into the bonsai art. And I do love growing trees, especially from seed. But then, I simply can’t prune them or bend them. I don’t want to change anything about them, I just want to watch them grow and be with them. Not force them into my idea of beauty.

I don’t even know what beauty is. Even though I find these bonsais beautiful, what I would do if I got one would be to stick it into the earth and watch it live as the roots can finally grow as deep as they please and the branches can reach up, unweighted.

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(This story told in pictures.)