mission
Inochinoki 命の木 (Tree of Life in Japanese) is a place where you are invited to reflect yourself as a tree by playing word game: T.R.E.E. Using only four letters in sequence to write a short haiku length story. Challenge to dig into inter-generational trauma as life of the tree.
WORD
2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bares twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
THE BLUE CLOUDS OF HOPE
The blue clouds of hope are precious
The dreams of the young
Gallop through the universe
A long time ago, my grandfather wrote this poem (a tanka) for me.
BACKGROUND
For the year of Nurses in 2010, I submitted a short essay to the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH), and it was accepted and published on NIGH website along with those of other nurses and midwives around the world. This experience taught me how I could reach out to a wide audience as well how easy it is to be buried in the layers of host site. Later, the site was renovated and there was no archive function to keep those 2010 essays. One of the reasons for creating my website Inochinoki 命の木 (Tree of Life in Japanese) in 2012 was to have a place for the essay titled, the Blue Cloud of Hope, which expressed my core beliefs about life, nursing, inter-generational connection over different languages and cultures.
In honor of the 2020 Year of the Nurse & Midwife, NIGH has been very active. At the 2020 Conference of the Commonwealth Nurses & Midwives Federation (CNMF), held on March 6-7 in London, NIGH co-Director Dr. Deva-Marie Beck delivered closing keynote speech and premiered the film in Florence Nightingale’s Own Words. At this conference, I presented my work inspired by a childhood game of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), titled, “From the Word game B.R.E.A.T.H to T.R.E.E: Branching Out from the Gilded Cage”, proposed the word game T.R.E.E. as a tool for people of all ages.
This game asks players to write a short haiku length story with sentences starting with the four letters T, R, E, and E. At the time, I was not sure how to implement my proposal, but thought of using my website.
Living in this rapidly changing world, I am very humble to share the word game T.R.E.E., inspired by Florence Nightingale. She said “Nature alone cures … What nursing has to do is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.” She was an influential figure who advocated public health issues, especially the need for access to fresh air and water. There are no easy fixes, but at least I hope people will take some time to play and share the word game T.R.E.E. and write short, haiku length stories. The challenge of these stories is to dig into inter-generational trauma through the figure of the life of a tree. This morning (December 10, 2020) I wrote one, thinking of people from Fukushima who attempted, in 1869, to establish the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony in Placerville, California.
Tsunami, Roaring over a piece of the dry Earth, Escape to unknown