To be a good writer, one must be a good read­er. This is made true by the need to absorb and assess the work of oth­er writ­ers, but even more so by the need to eval­u­ate one’s own. Writ­ing is re-writ­ing, to coin a phrase, and effec­tive re-writ­ing can only fol­low astute re-read­ing. This con­di­tion applies to oth­er arts and crafts as well: take bon­sai, the regard­ing of which con­sti­tutes a skill in and of itself. To craft an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing minia­ture tree, one must first be able to see an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing minia­ture tree — or per­haps to feel one. “Bon­sai trees (and inspir­ing art in gen­er­al) give me a ‘feel­ing’ that is hard to describe,” as prac­ti­tion­er Bucky Barnes puts it in the video above. “I’m not get­ting it from this tree yet, so I know I need to con­tin­ue tweak­ing.”

That tree is a Japan­ese larch bon­sai, Barnes’ year of work on which the video com­press­es into a mere 22 min­utes. The work is more than a mat­ter of water and sun­light: aspects that must be con­sid­ered and aggres­sive­ly mod­i­fied, include the plan­t’s view­ing and pot­ting angle, the num­ber and direc­tion of its branch­es, and even the struc­ture of roots spread­ing through the soil below.

Barnes breaks out a range of clip­pers, knives, pastes, brush­es, and wires — part of a suite of tools that, at least for the mas­ters back in bon­sai’s home­land of Japan, can get expen­sive indeed. To us lay­men, the tree that results from this year of work looks pret­ty respectable, but by bon­sai stan­dards its exis­tence has only just begun. Over the com­ing decades — or even the com­ing cen­turies — it could take on oth­er qual­i­ties alto­geth­er. When well main­tained, bon­sai only improve with age.

As demon­strat­ed in the video just above, how­ev­er, not every bon­sai receives such main­te­nance. A prod­uct of the same Youtube chan­nel, Bon­sai Releaf, “Restor­ing a Neglect­ed Chi­nese Juniper Bon­sai” begins with a tree that, to many of its near­ly four mil­lion view­ers so far, prob­a­bly does­n’t look too bad. Barnes sees things dif­fer­ent­ly: begin­ning by sketch­ing the tree, appar­ent­ly a stan­dard stage of his pro­fes­sion­al bon­sai-view­ing process, he sets about cor­rect­ing a host of defi­cien­cies like “low­er branch­es com­pet­ing for light,” exces­sive upward or down­ward growth (as well as some­thing called “weak crotch growth”), and dead tis­sue not delin­eat­ed from liv­ing. This labo­ri­ous oper­a­tion requires an even wider tool set, encom­pass­ing Dremels and even flames. But by the video’s end, any­one can see the dif­fer­ence in the tree itself — and more impor­tant­ly, feel it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

What Makes the Art of Bon­sai So Expen­sive?: $1 Mil­lion for a Bon­sai Tree, and $32,000 for Bon­sai Scis­sors

Daisu­gi, the 600-Year-Old Japan­ese Tech­nique of Grow­ing Trees Out of Oth­er Trees, Cre­at­ing Per­fect­ly Straight Lum­ber

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Not so long ago, a wave of long-form entreaties rolled through social media insist­ing that we stop build­ing rock cairns. Like many who scrolled past them, I could­n’t quite imag­ine the offend­ing struc­tures they meant, let alone recall con­struct­ing one myself. The cairns in ques­tion turned out, mun­dane­ly, to be those lit­tle stacks of flat rocks seen in parks, along­side trails and streams. They’re as com­mon in South Korea, where I live, as they seem to be in the Unit­ed States. Both coun­tries also share a great enthu­si­asm for Insta­gram, and it’s the appar­ent Insta­gram­ma­bil­i­ty of these cairns that has increased their num­ber (and con­se­quent eco­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al harm) in recent years.

No mat­ter how many likes they gar­ner, these com­mon cairns require lit­tle or no skill in the build­ing. The same can hard­ly be said of rock bal­anc­ing, an art that demands a great deal more dis­ci­pline and patience than many an influ­encer can muster. The Wired video at the top of the post pro­files one of the most famous liv­ing rock-bal­ancers, a Cana­di­an named Michael Grab.

“One of my core dri­ves is to make the for­ma­tion as impos­si­ble as pos­si­ble,” he says, refer­ring to the appar­ent defi­ance of grav­i­ty per­formed by all the rocks he finds and arranges into stacks, arcs, orbs, and oth­er unlike­ly shapes. In fact, it is grav­i­ty alone that holds his art­works togeth­er — and repeat­ed­ly destroys them in the count­less tri­als and errors before their com­ple­tion.

Yes, Grab has an Insta­gram account: Grav­i­ty Glue, on which he show­cas­es his pre­car­i­ous­ly sol­id sculp­tures as well as their nat­ur­al con­texts. So does Jon­na Jin­ton, a Swedish “artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Youtu­ber” who also bal­ances rocks. “It’s such a great way to also bal­ance myself,” she says in the short video just above, “and to cre­ate some­thing beau­ti­ful at the same time.” For her, the art has become a form of med­i­ta­tion: “As I try to find a tiny, tiny lit­tle bal­ance point, my thoughts are com­plete­ly silent, and that’s a very good feel­ing.” Jin­ton does­n’t say whether she per­son­al­ly ensures the destruc­tion of her works, as Grab does. But doing so, as one should note before enter­ing the rock-bal­ancer lifestyle, may keep you on the bet­ter side of the eco­log­i­cal rec­om­men­da­tions and indeed the law. But then the afore­men­tioned anti-cair­nism seemed to hit its zenith in ear­ly 2020, since which time, it’s fair to say, the world has had more press­ing con­cerns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.