Good Planets: Memory

Cherry Leaves in Stone Basin


Good Planets is up on Bev Wigney's wonderful Burning Silo. The theme was Memory. Contributors explored memory through many different lenses. Definitely check it out.

Above is the photo I contributed. This may look familiar; it's the lead photo for my recent post of "lost and found" photos from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden from November 2005. Several people found that photo evocative. It is for me as well. Below is my explanation of how it connects to "memory" for me.

This basin is outside the entrance to the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Built from 1914-1915 and opened to the public in June 1915, it was the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden. This image speaks to “memory” for me in many ways. There are other times the basin has been filled with water from rain. The emptiness of the basin holds that memory for me. The leaves: the memory of the cherry trees above the basin, their flowers in Spring, how they look at other seasons, the memories of past winters like the one about to come.

There is another, darker kind of remembering which this basin, and the whole garden, holds for me. The Japanese Garden was designed by Takeo Shiota. He died in 1943 in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Read The Death of Takeo Shiota for my take on this.