A long time in the future… after events that changed our world, a silent political Party of Trees was formed. Not to rule the world or make laws for the economic profit of selected individuals but to advise, feed and protect all species of this earth.

With their heads high in the sky they stood for the rights and duties of all beings, and the natural patterns of life and death. Rights that every living creature deserves equally. Duties that many of them performed already, but were made to do even more or live in poverty or even to hide their existence by the dominant species.

The silent political Party of Trees was formed from Arboreal persons chosen to represent every aspect they stood for:

• love and beauty
• energy
• water and food
• drugs and health
• air and soil
• wisdom
• weakness
• life and death
• symbiosis…

Chosen trees understood the importance of their engagement and the responsibilities that they would have to carry on their shoulders from one age to another. Their party was formed not out of boredom, fancy, or private ambition but pure necessity for this planet and the universe.

Are we ready to allow and embrace the necessity?

You can join the silent political Party of Trees by completing one of these walks and by listening to the stories thees trees are telling you.

===Tree walk in Forêt de Soignes===
in the framework of [[http://www.bessst.be/|Bessst]]
[[http://libarynth.org/_media/watermaal_bosvoorde_treewalk.png|Link to map]]

* Oak

• Vlier, Elder, Sambucus

Please meet this pharmacist of the forest. Small and scruffy bush with tinny leaves in the early spring, doesn't attract lots of attention. But wait till it starts blossoming! It will be swarmed with insects. And in the autumn they get replaced by birds. Elder is beneficial not only to the animals. People have been using it for ages. Not only enjoying sweet smell and taste of the blossom in the teas and syrups but also making jams from berries. The entire tree is to be used for healing purposes. Flowers and berries are used in treating the flu, alleviating allergies, and boosting overall respiratory health. As well Elder is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, dissolved in wine, for rheumatism and traumatic injury But be careful. Some powers can become danger. Eating row berries can cause nausea and stomach aches.

Branches from the elder are also used to make the flutes. Magic flute? Sounds can heal deepest illnesses… In common with other trees with white blossom, such as hawthorn and rowan, the elder had strong associations with Faery- and Goddess-centred mythology. Like rowan, the elder was thought of as being a protective tree, and it was auspicious if it was growing near one's dwelling, especially if it had seeded itself there. If the rowan's place was traditionally at the front of the house, the elder's was at the back door, to keep evil spirits and other negative influences from entering the home. The aroma exuded by the elder's leaves has long been known to repel flies, so this folklore may have been borne out of the need to keep such insects, and the diseases that they carried, away from the kitchen and food. Bunches of leaves were hung by doorways, in livestock barns, and attached to horses' harnesses for the same reason. Elder was traditionally planted around dairies and it was thought to be efficacious in keeping the milk from 'turning'. Cheese cloths and other linen involved in dairying were hung out to dry on elder trees, and the smell they absorbed from the leaves may have contributed to hygiene in the dairy. Elder trees were also traditionally planted by bake houses as protection from the Devil (what with all those hellishly hot ovens within!) and loaves and cakes put out to cool under the elders. Any foods left out overnight under an elder however were considered a gift to the faeries. In common with many other native trees and plants with potent pagan associations, the elder subsequently had negative Christian legends associated with it, to suppress earlier beliefs.The elder was doubly cursed as being the tree from which Judas Iscariot hanged himself, as well as being one of several trees 'accused' of having supplied the wood for the Crucifixion Cross (oak and aspen being other popular culprits), though the small size of the elder trees and the fact that Jesus would not have struggled under the weight of a crossbar made of such a lightweight wood as elder make this highly unlikely.

Notwithstanding these negative beliefs, elder continued to be put to such a wide range of medicinal uses that the mediaeval herbalist John Evelyn called it “a kind of Catholicon against all Infirmities whatever”. Washing her face in dew gathered from elderflowers was believed to enhance and preserve a woman's youthful beauty, and derivatives of elder continue to be used in skin cleansers such as Eau de Sareau, and eye lotions. Elderberry wine, elderflower cordial and dried elderflowers for infusion are all still commercially available. A couple of cups of hot elderflower tea before bedtime helps to bring on a cleansing sweat to combat cold and 'flu-like symptoms, and elderberry drinks were formerly prescribed to sooth throat complaints. A fine elderflower champagne can be made using the yeasts naturally present in the blossoms, which can also be dipped in a batter and eaten as fritters.

• Hazelnut

• Hornbeam
• Alder
• Birch
• Larch
• Beuk

[[Tree walk in the centre of Brussels]]
in the framework of [[http://www.bessst.be/|Bessst]]

• Fig Prutske
• Elms the twins
• Bamboo not a tree
• Wild chestnut Leopold
• Non existing tree Dansaard
• Platanus the Court of justice

 [[Round table discussion/walk for States of the Arts]]
 
 We where invited to present the idea of Silent Political Party of Trees at the round table discussion during the event    State of the arts in Brussels http://fo.am/state-arts/   

http://www.paramoulipist.be/treeparty

I take on the talking stick Going on the road of naivity and imagination a speculative table:story a way to bypass the actual political institutions to be able to approach them in a different way, rethink them

method: we proposed some thoughts and questions, everyone could write down associations on small papers, cut them like leaves and put them on a heap in the middle of the table, the autumn metaphor

we choose trees, because - we depend upon them for our survival and by now they depend on us for their survival - we can learn from them: they are competitive and very solidary, they are generous and never destructive we want to take them into account by including them into our juridic system we invented an arboreal persona, that equals the natural persona and the legal persona every tree has a minimum of rights and duties already depending on where s/he lives the Brussels' tree 'states' are irregular and fragmented

When we look at trees, time scale becomes an obvious criteria: they have lived before us, they will live after us, the shortest life cycle of a common tree here is 80 years (larch, birch), the longest up to 500 (oak). Politicians think in terms of 4 or 6 years, forest guards think in terms of centuries. The trees we live with today in the forest have been planted by people 200 years ago. They serve us with beauty, pleasure, food and materials. The trees that are planted now will serve the future generations in 300 years time. So the choices the forest guard makes are not for himself, nor for his friends, they are for all living creatures, for the earth.

When we think about a silent political party of trees, the first thing that comes in mind is: do trees communicate? If so, how do we communicate with them? Trees are silent, but we all agree that they do communicate. They can talk. We have seem to have lost our capacity to communicate with them. Or are we deaf? Or death, like someone understood it? There have been ancient societies in which trees were part of daily social life. When a child was born it would get a tree assigned to it. In celtic culture f.ex. each tree represents a specific value. If we want to be represented by trees, we need translators. These are people who developed a specific mindset. Empathy seems to be the answer (cfr the book by Frans De Waele). And telepathic communication (cfr Rupert Sheldrake). 'As I am a lasagna of identities, could one of them be a 3?'

You cannot talk about someone without the presence of this individual, that is one of the basic rules of respect. So we went for a walk to meet some trees. One of them is Prutske, a fig tree in a pot near De Beurs. It still bears figs now. Figs are like flowers turned inside out. Therefore Prutske was collectively declared to be an artwork. But it is also a worrying proof of human genetic engineering, as Prutske normally would need wasps to reproduce herself, and these wasps cannot live in our climate. How come Prutske bears fruits in the middle of November? This thought led us to the idea that trees and artists have a lot in common: they both create fruits that others can enjoy, they have underground networks and upperground networks, and they cultivate the art of being, living in the now, connecting themselves with the past and projecting themselves in the future. We live from, for and with energy. In Belgium a lot of artists work under the status of the houthakker/woodcutter. We asked ourselves if Prutske would also need a visa?

We also thought on how such a tree party could work in a hundred years time, or fifty, or maybe already tomorrow. It seems obvious that the tree party would be part of a matririfocal society. Where Lietaer talked about the yin and yang of the money system, we could apply that to the political system. The tree party could then be the yin part next to the classical yang part and they would have to collaborate. Some obligatory aspects of this tree party would be: - the meetings would have to take place outside, in the presence of trees; that is where politics begun anyway - to have to listen beyond words, to tune into the collective wisdom and speak from there - to take time, every break there would be a mandatory tree hugging for all politicans for at least 5 minutes; those who don't like hugging, can climb a tree. - there would be one season dedicated to rest - people would have to use a talking stick that they pass on to each other (the microphone is also a talking stick ) - there could be invisible individuals influencing the decision making (story of the hazel with the mistletoe toe and the golden snake) - there would be a cyclic time representative And in the end, last thought: there is the proposal to vote for the meiboom as the new mayor of Brussels! https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157637413989015/

http://ekostories.com/2013/05/16/le-guin-direction-of-the-road/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157636253456134/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157633447132812/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157633431550085/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157633224778197/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157631828144552/