B(L)OOM
words by Lovely Umayam
art by Tammy Nguyen
a project of Bombshelltoe and Passenger Pigeon Press
1.
Several months into the pandemic, I formed a habit of beginning my day with a long gaze out the living room window. I would sit there with morning coffee cupped in my hands, my eyes adjusting to daylight. The view is uninspiring: a parking lot with unused cars gathering dust, and a chipped white fence begging for a repaint.
But this window is a source of joy.
Also perched on it are five house plants of varying heights and sizes, all purchased during the COVID-19 lockdown: one palm, one fern, and three succulents.
Their stems coiled upwards at an angle, leaning against the pane, following the sunlight. I look out the window every morning to commune with my plant friends, imagining what they "see" — a world out of reach, wrestling with death and uncertainty. Amidst such frightening stillness, I like to watch them grow.
2.
Plantlife bears witness to death and destruction, including its own. Scientists estimate more than 571 plant species have died out since 1750, which is double the total number for extinct mammals, birds, and amphibians combined. In the past three decades, humans have logged and uprooted an innumerable number of trees, totaling more than 600 square miles, an area the size of Mongolia. Trees fall at such a pace that whole ecosystems may never recover. As is with pandemic deaths, the human mind is not hardwired to understand this magnitude of loss. Sometimes it takes the death of an individual tree to make an impression, like a single redwood trapped in a wildfire, embers eating its hollowed center - an open wound.
But as the fauna and flora of the Earth grapple with the ever-shifting conditions for survival, they are also surrounded by another kind of dying.
3.
Plants, flowers, and trees exist on a different temporal plane, some wilting in a matter of days only to be reborn the next year, while others grow undisturbed for millennia. What curious perspective this way of living offers: an unhurried existence, passively watching time carve mountains, stretch rivers, and shape the lives of men.
Plants do not run out of time. Rather, they mark time like a second hand; tree rings and the shedding of leaves are natural ledgers of beginnings, change, and decay.
As such, plants have an unenviable panoramic view of human violence. Red poppies sprouted in the festering trenches of Flanders Fields. Carnations found themselves stuffed inside the mouths of rifles during protests denouncing the Vietnam War.
Poplar trees carry the indelible mark of American slavery on their pliant and bloodied boughs. In the most tragic moments, it is easy to forget the vitality of landscapes, that humans are not completely alone in their violence and suffering.
Scholars have written about bereaved families of fallen soldiers seeking seeds from remote battlefields so they can plant them back home, breeding verdant offspring that bind spatial memory of life and death. Botanists now argue that plants actually "remember" in their own special way, a cellular process facilitated through the exchange of chemical signals between calcium channels, much slower than the frenetic firing of neurons in the human brain. But if, for a day, plants are given human consciousness and voice, what types of memories would they reveal? What would they say about the horrors they quietly watch and endure?
B(L)OOM
words by Lovely Umayam
art by Tammy Nguyen
a project of Bombshelltoe and Passenger Pigeon Press
B(L)OOM is about the retelling of history from the perspective of plants that survived and communities that rebuilt amid the aftermath of nuclear destruction (gingko trees in Japan) or persevered under nuclear threat (sunflowers in Ukraine). Through historical research, creative nonfiction, and hand-made artbook, B(L)OOM weaves a story around a single powerful image: life growing out of rubble.
B(L)OOM was originally published in 2021 and is being produced this year as an extension of the Atomic Terrain project. This is an ongoing edition.
B(L)OOM was written by Lovely Umayam, designed and produced by Tammy Nguyen with assistance from Holly Greene and Daniella Porras. B(L)OOM was produced using full-color photocopy, hot stamping, laser cutting, and hand-sewn binding.