February Fancy

[asakiyume]

Here are three photos for you. Two I've shared elsewhere on the interwebs, so some of you will have seen them before, but the first one is making its world premiere right here, right now!

Dancing a cumbia with a candle.

Last month we went to see Yeison Landero and his band play cumbia in Amherst. (Here's what his music is like--he throws his head back and goes into a beatific trance as he plays.) It was marvelous.



When we were last in Colombia, we had one very brief session of learning to dance ;-) The teacher showed us several different styles of cumbia dancing, including one where one partner (traditionally, the guy) takes off his hat and holds it high, then low, as the two partners twirl round. That night in Amherst, the venue was full of people dancing their hearts out, including this one girl wielding a candle like a hat. How great to be dancing with fire!**

Ice Eye

Sometimes the frozen beaver pond glares up at you with a critical eye! (The eye is created by people opening a hole in the ice for ice fishing. It refreezes, and then it's opened again, and so on.)



Popcorn Blossoms



From swollen buds, just about to unfurl, to a double-petaled flower in all its glory, popcorn blossoms are rightly celebrated for their beauty. As the classical poet wrote

Seeing them explode
ought to be the end of it.
These popcorn blossoms!
--Nothing can keep their buttery goodness
from lingering on my fingers.

(apologies to the poet Sosei and the translator larryhammer for my abuse of Kokinshū poem no. 47. You can read more of Larry's for-real translations in Ice Melts in the Wind: The Seasonal Poems of the Kokinshu.)


**Actually we think it was an electric candle. But let's imagine!

Comments

[shewhomust]

Love the popcorn!

[asakiyume]

It was so fun to be able to pick out kernels in these different stages of popped!

[light_of_summer]

Very evocative photos & music—thanks!

Re dancing with fire vs. electric candles: I actually have seen both. I hope the candle in your photo was electric, though I've only seen tea-light size electric candles, myself. When I saw people dancing with actual live fire, the dancers shepherded their audience out to an empty parking lot area to watch, and someone stood by with a fire extinguisher during the dancing! (Fortunately, it was not needed during that performance, but it was sobering to see that as part of their practice. I wonder if they were careful to wear natural fiber or otherwise fire-resistant clothing, too?)

Here's a link to a fairly brief video that shows fire dancing similar to what I saw: [link] However, I think that the equipment has changed since I saw it. I remember it the burning material being contained in small metal pots suspended from chains, and I couldn't spot that anywhere I looked online. I wonder if the newer equipment is safer or just showier?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[asakiyume]

Ooooh, that was beautiful! Thank you!

[cmcmck]

Then there's always the Ottery St Mary tar barrels!

[light_of_summer]

Oo, thanks for mentioning them—I hadn't heard of that town & custom before!

[asakiyume]

Such a cool (or hot!) tradition!

[sovay]

I love all of these pictures. They really seem to go together.

[asakiyume]

I'm glad you think so.

It's not quite

The sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightening with its rapid wrath

but yes, these things are the answers I place between us and (to keep on the Madeleine L'Engle theme) these ecthroi-like all-consumers, all-destroyers, who delight so in others' misery.

[sartorias]

What fun! I've noticed that about popcorn. I wonder who first figured it out.

[asakiyume]

You mean about how they look like flower buds? Or you mean about the fact that you can pop corn kernel?

I'm guessing anyone who looks at popcorn closely and sees the half-popped kernels could get the idea, but as for how they discovered that you could pop corn seeds to get this effect, yeah! I guess it must have been a felicitous discovery by indigenous peoples of the Americas at some point, but who knows when?

I like the Spanish name for popcorn: palomitas (de maíz), little (corn) doves.

[sartorias]

Oh, what a charming word!

[osprey_archer]

Love the photos of the progression of the corn kernel popping.

And the dancing-with-fire picture is a delight!

[asakiyume]

Most photos taken in a darkened space, and where what you're trying to capture is movement, aren't very good (or at least maybe I should say, most of mine aren't!), but I feel like that photo of the woman does capture the flavor of what it was like to be there.

I'm glad you liked the popcorn flower progression. Popcorn, popcorn, how do your flowers bloom?

[osprey_archer]

My photos in darkened spaces usually aren't very good either, so it's not just you. Even when I'm not trying to capture movement! Just getting a photo of my tasty dinner, which is holding still!