susana tornero

Some years ago, in a trip to Latvia, a woman told me that when she had visited our land, she was surprised that many people did not know the name of the trees. When she asked: «Which tree is this?», they simply answered: «I don’t know, it’s a tree». In Latvian culture, deeply rooted in nature and seasonal cycles (the first time I travelled there, just after getting off the plane they offered me birch water, to prepare the body for spring arrival), this fact was fairly surprising.

The truth is that I had never seen it from this light. I have always considered myself more a country girl than a city girl, but I had to recognize that I had never pay much attention to the trees that live in Barcelona. And I discovered that this ignorance in my case was quite true: I could distinguish little more than pines, oaks, olive trees and some fruit trees. That was all.

This is how my curiosity for trees sprouted and grew. I began to pay attention to them, asking, trying to distinguish them among the landscape of cement and pavement. Each time I found a tree I didn’t know, I looked for names, and I discovered that, just like us, some of our leafy neighbours came from far away and had managed to take roots and acclimatize despite the difficulties. And to recognize one of them in an unknown place of the city, welcoming me, has become a new pleasure that makes me feel more accompanied.

Trees began to inhabit my stories as a natural process that probably will never end. And now that I feel a bit like a tree, in a dormant state due to the winter’s cold, counting down the days until spring arrives, it seems the right time for telling some of these folktales. Not all of them, of course, or this would be the never ending story.

Saturday 10th March at 20:30h
The Never Ending Tree
Storytelling session in Spanish
Ticket 7€ (6€ at Atrapalo)
Harlem Jazz Club
C/ Comtessa Sobradiel, 8
08002 Barcelona
Metro: L3 Liceu and L4 Jaume I
Bus: 18, 20, 24, 36, 57, 64, 91, 157

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.