Asakiyume mita

There's a chair beside the path in the woods. Some leaves have collected on it.

Would you sit on it?



I sent the photo to my Tikuna tutor. She said maybe it's the seat of Madre Monte, a guardian of the forest and the animals in it, a terror to hunters, clearcutters, and fishers. She appears in the deep forest when there are storms, is responsible for water-borne ailments, and her screams are louder than thunder (says Spanish-language Wikipedia).

But maybe in her quieter moments, she appreciates a good place to sit down.

It takes temerity to sit in a seat that has "reserved" written all over it, but one of the fairies at my christening blessed me with temerity, so I gave it a try--and then jumped up, because when I sat, I sank riiiiiiiiight in, and I didn't want to find out deep the sinking would go.

* * *

In my dad's front yard there are a sugar maple and a Norway maple. The Norway maple was shedding maps the other day.



Where would you like to go?

Each map is unique--you take it and follow it as you see fit. You could do this with ordinary maps, too. A map of London is great for navigating London, but what if you try using it in Osaka or Kota Kinabalu or Cairo? It could be interesting.

The mail brought a welcome item--my uncorrected proof for LAGOONFIRE!



I must go through it carefully and root out typos! The Polity approves of rooting out errors.

Last book featured a deity who wasn't ready to be retired. This one features a bunch of retired gods. How do they spend their time? How does the Polity treat them? You can learn a lot about a government by how it treats its decommissioned deities.

I've been spending too much time just working, but when I'm not, I step outside to enjoy the cosmos ... by which I mean the flower called cosmos, but hey, it's part of the bigger cosmos, so both things, actually.



Seems like each blossom held its own bee:


By the time I got those photos, late-ish today, the bees all seemed to be sleeping, but this morning they were active, flying blossom to blossom, but always politely socially distancing when they saw a blossom was already occupied.

It's past 5 pm, local time. Have an autumn brew.

I'm happy to report that both a squirrel and our cat, on separate occasions, more or less honored the walls of the maze and walked along the path. The squirrel was stopping periodically to check the leaf pile and a couple of times used its little squirrel hands to pat the leaves back in place, like squirrels do with the ground after they've buried a nut.

Making the maze


The sacred marshmallow-roasting altar


Done!


Completely unrelated, the song I'm listening to right now, "Mira," has the line

La vida es un pañuelo y que se abre lento

I didn't know "pañuelo," so I looked it up, and it means "handkerchief." How beautiful: "Life is a handkerchief and it opens up slowly." A handkerchief world, a handkerchief life.

mallorys_camera and I went to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where we enjoyed especially the art of Peter Sís, who has a way with fine lines, labyrinths, and rich colors (especially his blues I love). His art was better as paintings on a wall than as illustrations in a book; somehow they were diminished in book form, which isn't always the case with picture book art.

Here's a picture from a book he did about Tibet (his father got lost in Tibet for two years).



And here's one of birds on a journey--beautiful as a picture, but the story was posey and precious in a way I dislike.



After visiting the museum, we walked a bit and saw these bees, doing their golden work on goldenrod. Thank you, bees.

You can see examples of kintsugi--repairing ceramics with gold, so the crack itself becomes a thing of beauty, and the object-with-cracks is celebrated and appreciated--various places online (here's one). This morning I saw pine needles doing kintsugi with cracks in the road, laying down in the crevices and repairing the road very beautifully:

They spend all their lives up in the air, up in the sky, attached to twigs attached to branchlets attached to branches, but in the autumn they all come to the great convention center at ground level. They are all so excited, swarming and rushing about, gathering in clusters, playing mad games. This is their carnival, their great parade, their festival of a lifetime. We ground dwellers--grass and snakes and dogs and people, etc.--smile indulgently and don't mind at all how they take over everything for these festival days. So they clog the thoroughfares and the parks, so what? It's a pleasure to see them all in such high spirits, and they don't mind at all if you join in.

Eventually they spend themselves and fall asleep, and all their dreams sink into the earth and the tree roots drink them in, and they are transmitted to the translucent baby leaves that unfold in the spring.

The oak leaves are starting to fall. If there's even a little breeze, they travel, and they do it by spinning round, like maple-seed helicopters, or by becoming tiny sails and moving straight forward, and sometimes by sashaying side-to-side, like a person enjoying the feel of their hips. They're hard to catch, dipping away just when you think you might grab one: "uh-uh-ohh, no-no!" they seem to say.

There was a family out raking their lawn together: a mother, father, grandmother, and little toddler. The mother clapped a falling oak leaf in her hands and I clapped for her success and gave her the thumbs up, and she smiled and waved.

wakanomori caught a red-oak leaf and asked me to carry it home with me (he was going on a longer run than I was), and on my way back, I caught a white-oak leaf. The various species of red oaks have pointy leaves; the white oaks have rounded ones. Friendship between red and white! (In Japan, those are the two sides that are always fighting each other.)

backpack for a pillow
Walking early, first on the rails, balancing. It's one of my favorite things. Later, past kids waiting for the bus. One girl had made her backpack into a pillow and was lying on the cold ground, knees bent. Other kids were standing around. One of the kids, his eyes and mine met. I smiled and looked away.

red leaves
Driving to the dentist, past maples whose leaves are still bright red. I keep meaning to gather some bright-red leaves and make a leaf wreath. I daydream about doing this each year, but I never have. My chances are almost past for this year, too. Of course the leaves would dry and curl and fade right away, but it's the chance to handle that momentary brightness and make something. I can't add at all to their beauty but if I can *use* their beauty, then I'll feel like I've participated in it.

open faces
On the way into the medical building, a silver-haired woman with a walker and a silver-haired man, walking beside her. I don't know even the barest speck about their joys and troubles; all I can tell you is that both their faces seemed open and serene.

hard times
In the building, a thin woman on a cell phone, pacing by the stairwell. "Yeah, I've been having a hard time . . . The kids? They're not little anymore. My daughter's 15 and my son is 13, will be 14 at the end of the month . . ." Does talking on a cell phone confer its own privacy?

maybe tomorrow
After the dentist, passing those red leaves again, but I can't stop, because I have a job waiting at home. And just now I've finished the job, but it's dark out. So maybe I'll try tomorrow.

I'll be offline for a while again this weekend, so let me offer you a walk through faerie--comments off, so when next we meet, I can start with a clean (ish) slate . . .

You can choose between poems, novels, folklore, cool nonfiction, or nature, or--you can have all of them

poems

People who read this blog will no doubt be aware of the new zine Liminality. Well its first issue is out! With a lovely portrait of a mangrove dryad by haikujaguar on its cover and so. many. wonderful. poems.

Maggie Hogarth's cover
LIMINALITY


( some of the poetic goodness under the cut )

novels

Just one: Prisoner, by Lia Silver. I haven't written up my review of it yet, but it's just so good.


( some effusive gushing )

Folklore

Part one of a two-part introduction to mythic, folkloric creatures from around the world is up right now at the Book Smugglers. Cultures covered include Mexican, South Asian (Vedic based), Maori, and Filipino, as well as a look at dragonlike beings around the world, and the wonders of actual, real-world trees from around the world. A great read.

"A Diverse Mythical Creatures Round Table"

Cool nonfiction

I haven't read this yet, but I'm going to: Quilombo dos Palmares: Brazil's Lost Nation of Fugitive Slaves, by Glenn Cheney.



Did you know that there was a nation of escaped slaves that existed for almost 90 years in the 1600s in Brazil? I did not. I wonder what stories and legends must come down through the generations from that nation? I expect Glenn's book will help answer that question. He's written about the dispossessed farmers of Brazil, Promised Land, which I reviewed here, so I have confidence that this book will be an in-depth, thoughtful treatment.

nature

a leaf falls on its face--you have a hint at what that face will show, but you're not sure:


. . . so you must turn it over.



There now. Perfect.

And with that I leave you for a bit, my friends. Gotta earn some money. But I will drop by your pages and answer comments later today.