Here are two truths: the ginkgo is immortal, and the ginkgo will die.

The ginkgo is a tree that escapes time — the oldest on record is 3,500 years old. Like all living organisms, ginkgos one day cease to live, but this will never be from old age. At the core of the ginkgo is the heartwood, but what grants them their longevity is actually just beneath the surface of the cork: the cambium, which holds together the inner rings of heartwood and sapwood. Scientists have learned that the cambium cells of the ginkgo don’t show signs of senescence — the gradual deterioration that is biological aging.\* Enshelled by a resilient armor of tree bark and roots reaching deep into the ground, the ginkgo quietly protects its living cells, which in turn protect the ginkgo. So long as this layer of cells remains untouched, alive, they will continue to be a spring of lifetimes and stories, producing new phloem and xylem tissue. This is what makes them 被爆樹木 (hibakujumoku) — trees that survived bombs that split atoms, the darkest sides of humanity, and countless threats of extinction before the dawn of mankind. Even now, ginkgo trees are rare in the wild, reduced to remote mountains in eastern China. Yet they are a familiar face that lines city streets worldwide, conserved through millennia of cultivation. The ginkgo tree, with its glowing winged leaves, bearing gifts, bearing witness, bearing hope.

They bear many names too: the Maidenhair tree; Rökan, Tanakan and Tebonin extracts; living fossils; The Hermit; *Ginkgo biloba*. The western term for ginkgos comes from the Chinese 银杏 (Yínxìng) for silver apricot, translated into the kanji 銀杏 (Gin kyo) and then fatefully rechristened by a German explorer and Swedish botanist’s misspelling of the word in the 18th century. These many efforts lay bare the limitations of language to contain something as incommunicable and expansive as a tree.

꩜ The Ginkgo as a living fossil — like sea urchins, like horseshoe crabs, like tadpole shrimp. Ginkgos are almost biologically identical to their fossilized ancestors from the Middle Jurassic epoch, some 200 million years ago. On a human timeline, incomprehensible; a reminder of our brevity. Everywhere, they are dead and dying, but living on at the same time. More than simply living, they teem with aliveness. Resisting change and the order of things. Connecting life and afterlife.

꩜ The Ginkgo as The Hermit — ginkgos are the last of their kind. *Ginkgo biloba* is the only living species of the *Ginkgo* genus, which is the only remaining genus in the *Ginkgoaceae* family, which is the only existing family in the *Ginkgoales* order, an order that first appeared 290 million years ago, long before dinosaurs hatched on earth. Gentle elders, an omen of something ancient that defies extinction and evolution. The tree that cannot help but live.

I asked someone I crossed paths with recently for advice, and they instructed me to pay attention to what any ginkgo tree tells me. Tell me, tree, what do you believe in?

Trees communicate by exchanging complex chemical signals through thread-like fungi that connect their roots together. Though our understanding of it continues to be extremely limited, trees also experience the world through pheromones in the wind, and through the hums and vibrations of nearby creatures such as ourselves. Trees can even recognize whether they are surrounded by kin.† Can a tree be lonely? The last of their class, do ginkgos sing a different song? Gifted slowness, blurs of light, purity.

They stand transfixed in shifting landscapes — a living fossil in the anthropocene, which is to say a living memory. Are they at home here?

Timeless friend, who watched us unchanged and unmoving as we hummed into existence, and will one day watch us blip out of it. Does it want to remember, or would it choose to forget? What does a ginkgo offer to a world in flux, a people in everlasting transition? Us, so committed to our liminality, our living between myths. Them, blessed with endurance, revered for their patience. Like stories and like cambium cells, they grow around us, but also grow us.

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\*Wang, Li et al. "Multifeature Analyses of Vascular Cambial Cells Reveal Longevity Mechanisms in Old Ginkgo biloba Trees." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, no. 4, 2020, pp. 2201-2210. <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916548117>

†Biedrzycki, Meredith L., and Harsh P. Bais. "Kin Recognition in Plants: A Mysterious Behavior Unsolved." Journal of Experimental Botany, vol. 61, no. 15, October 2010, pp. 4123-4128. <https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erq250>.

What the Ginkgo Tree Bears

*From The Beat, New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.*

A brassy rendition of Abba’s *Chiquitita* filled the mid-May air as a saxophone player made his way down an empty residential street. With him was a woman, baby in arms, and a small child that clumsily tagged behind them like a duckling. Soon enough, the balconies of the once-empty Polanco street filled with spectators clapping and recording the performance below. Some cheered for the first time in days, some prepared loose change to give the musician. Down below, the child lagging behind now dragged her feet; an indication of the long walk she must continue to endure.

As COVID-19 mushrooms across Mexico and tourist hotspots transform into ghost towns, entertainers that mostly depended on the holidaymaker’s coin have been forced to seek out new audiences and means of income elsewhere. Relying on their daily earnings, they are unable to partake in social distancing and stay-at-home measures governments worldwide recommend. This brings an unexpected change to quieter CDMX neighborhoods during the pandemic, bringing music to the doorstep of many – at first a very welcome uplift during bleak times.

While the streets’ inhabitants can count on stable earnings and work safely from home, the musicians never know what tomorrow may bring. At the height of quarantine in late April, over ten individual musicians or bands could play the same block in a single day. Raúl Basilio, the saxophonist on the Polanco street, was one of them.

“We wish we could also stay home but if we did then we would have nothing to eat,” Basilio said in Spanish.

Risk of coronavirus seems less severe if put beside the certainty of hunger, especially when thinking about their young families.

Food is not the only necessity, they may also need to pay off a late month’s rent like Basilio, or to be able to afford borrowing instruments if they do not own any themselves, as musician Jose Eduardo Martinez is forced to do.

When first speaking to Basilio on the phone, I was greeted by his heavy Oaxacan accent, his voice breaking at times. Originally hailing from San Simón Zahuatlán, Oaxaca, he excused himself for his Spanish and apologized in advance for any stuttering as his mother tongue is Mixtec, one of Mexico’s 68 indigenous languages.

“Poquito a poquito,” he said. Little by little.

Basilio, 27, first learned how to play the saxophone with the help of a friend. After that, his love of the instrument grew, and he would listen to songs and fiddle with the saxophone until he figured out the whole song by himself. He can play Mexican ballads and reggaeton but most of all, he prefers English songs. When asked what he enjoys doing he paused, and then simply answered: “What do I like to do? Well, I play the saxophone.”

He would play in the city center with his family, as well as offer his saxophone services for hire and serenades, as is customary in Mexico.

“A lot of people have to leave the town to search for necessities since there is no work here. They have to leave behind their loved ones,” said Basilio. “It happened to me once, my parents would leave me here while I studied to go to Mexico \[City\] and find money to sustain us and send us a little,”

“Since there is not much here, it’s peaceful,” he added. “Very peaceful,”

He loves talking about how peaceful his town is. Having returned there in late May for an uncle’s funeral, he sent me photos of it so I can see for myself. A few dimly lit houses scattered along the mountainside blink at me under the night sky, miles away from the threat of the virus.

Currently, he and his family are unable to return to the capital as the authorities are not letting the townspeople board the bus. Many other people are also stranded there, he added. While he agrees that taking preventative measures is important, he stressed that if these people cannot go back to Mexico City, they will not earn enough money to feed their families.

“We just want to be helped,” he said, voice cracking. “For example, we want the government to see the town, to know there are people,”

He began another sentence as if to continue, but promptly gave up and said he simply does not have the words.

“The coronavirus really affects us. But that’s just how it is, right?”

He noted that he has not seen a lot of townspeople eating, as they cannot afford food. When he gets lucky, he said, he can put some money towards the rent and buy corn, rice and beans.

“Thank God there are kind people that do help us,” he said. “They toss down some coins at us from their balconies.”

“But there are also people who are bothered by the noise,” he added, referring to one time an apartment inhabitant told him to keep walking because his music was annoying.

Like Basilio, married couple Jose Eduardo and Karen Martinez sweep through residential streets to continue trying to make a living during the pandemic.

Mr. Martinez is an organillero (a barrel organ player), an occupation that was already controversial and strenuous enough in the Mexican capital before the first novel coronavirus cases had even occurred. Seen as a part of *El Viejo México* (The Old Mexico), younger generations view the organilleros as a dying breed and publicly show disdain for the sound their instruments make. It is hard to believe that the worn, no-longer-fabricated instruments were once the center of crowds, some performers accompanied by a monkey that collected their audience’s donations.

“The people that helps us most are elderly,” said Mrs. Martinez, 31, one of the few street performers who wears protective face coverage alongside her traditional khaki organillero uniform and hat. “They’ll tell us they remember organilleros going around, or they go, ‘Here have a coin. I don’t want to see organilleros disappear.’”

Some citizens actively trying to preserve the organillero tradition and contribute how they can, opening up their pantries to provide the Martinez family with sustenance like rice. Even before the coronavirus, however, this was not always enough to sustain them and their 10-year-old daughter waiting at home, on top of covering the daily MX$180 required to rent the instrument. With no additional support provided by the government during the pandemic and only some help from a small organillero union, they still depend on their daily earnings.

“Right now, with this whole pandemic thing, as it’s \[Jose Eduardo’s\] only job, we have to look for a way to put bread on the table,” she said.

Mrs. Martinez would not normally accompany her husband but has been helping him during the pandemic by collecting the donations on his rounds. He was introduced to the craft by organillero neighbors, and during his five years on the job, he usually works with a male partner who helps carry the 50kg instrument around city center as they ask for donations street corner after street corner.

Considering the current circumstances however, the family has taken advantage of Polanco and Colonia Del Valle’s wider avenues and put the barrel organ – *el* cilindro – on a wheeled cart they could normally not fit in the city center’s narrower streets. Still, it’s no easy feat getting it on the metro to take their hour-long ride from their home in Iztapalapa to the area surrounding Polanco, where they work from 9 to 6 every day. Neither is walking under the summer sun wearing the thick organillero outfit, Mrs. Martinez commented.

When talking, Mrs. Martinez referred to her home as “su casa” – meaning “your home” – instead of “mi casa” – meaning “my home”. Along with dog barks and the melodic voice of a child in the background of our phone conversation, Mrs. Martinez has a way of showcasing hospitality even to those away from her house.

However, not everyone’s attitude remains like Mrs. Martinez’s. Newness always wears off eventually, and the struggling musicians barely outside the front door of more affluent apartments become just part of the outside noise. While performers still walk the streets daily, balconies no longer crowd with curious spectators, eager to record the performance or clap along. Coronavirus cases in Mexico show no sign of stopping, or even slowing down, putting the street musicians more at risk with each passing day. With the continuation of the government’s failure to address its more invisible citizens, the future is still blurred.

The Wandering Musicians of Mexico City

open for work. offering idea development, copywriting, copyediting, curation, content creation, journalistic, archival and book design services. i am always interested in learning more about childhood, trees, world-building, grief, community, and building things with your hands. also on the lookout for a more permanent role that inspires me.

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2023