Asakiyume mita

We went for a walk at Bright Water Bog in Shutesbury, MA, yesterday. It was a misty, moisty, equinoctial day, with ice still present in places.

It was perfect. I do love-love-love places that blur water and land. Best of all? There were cranberries. Enchanting.

Cranberry, lower portion of the photo


( two more photos of two other cranberries, in case, like me, you can't get enough of them )

I saw a few just out of reach and was going to put a foot off the boardwalk and onto a tussock to pick one.

"I don't know if that's solid," Wakanomori said.

So I pressed on it with my hand, and down, down my hand went into that cold water. Not solid! Magic.

Canada geese or maybe otters or moose deliver mail here, I think:


Actually it's a geocache location.... shhhhhhh

This lichen-bespangled pine sapling is enjoying the acidity of the bog.


So much beauty--a mingling world of blurred boundaries.

The concoction really came into its own a couple of days after my post (which was on February 2)! I drank the last of it yesterday--good and tingly, soda-rific with bubbles and all, and a good fragrance and flavor of pine. I definitely intend to make it again!

I got five questions from osprey_archer!

1. What's a skill that you're proud of having?

... I'm realizing that it's hard to write an answer to this because as soon as I start composing in a direction, I think, Now you really sound like an insufferable asshole.

Am I perhaps proud of the skill of being able to guess when I'm about to sound like an insufferable asshole? ... Mmmm, I am not particularly proud of that. And I'm not even sure if my assessment is correct, so.

So ... skill implies something that you've worked on and honed--so not, say, a one-off accomplishment, and not something that's just part of your personality without your particularly exerting yourself.

Okay, how's this: I don't know if I'm proud, exactly, but it gives me great joy and exuberance to have discovered, in my fifties, that it's possible to learn multiple languages more or less simultaneously well enough to read them and attempt rudimentary communication in them. It literally feels like having developed a new sense, like my brain has changed its shape. ... Other people knew this delight from a young age, but not me. And there's something about coming to it later in life--you can be very consciously grateful, appreciative.

2. What's a treasured memory?

Sleeping together as a family on summer nights in Japan--the tactile-ness. The in-out of our breathing, together; our hearts are beating, together. Our foreheads are touching, or someone has an arm flung this way, or someone's toes are touching someone else's calves. Outside, insects are singing.

3. Do you have any unusual yearly traditions?

Not really; I have a hard time repeating things cyclically. For a while our family did Boston's Walk for Hunger yearly, but that's not a very unusual thing, and anyway, we since stopped. There are certain things I like to forage when the time is right (cattail pollen in June, chestnuts and hickory nuts in September and October), but I'm not consistent.

4. If you could have a telepathic companion animal, what kind of animal would you want?
I waver between something small enough to sit on my shoulder and something large enough that I could drape my arm over its shoulders. Much as it would be fun to have a telepathic connection with a dolphin (hello Ring of Endless Light) and fascinating to have one with a celphalopod, I think I'd prefer to have a connection with a terrestrial animal because delightful as water is, I can't breathe in it or even keep air in my lungs for as long as dolphins and other water-living mammals can. OTOH, if there are some telepathic marine creatures out there who are hankering for a connection, I withdraw that caveat! Come to me, friends!

... I guess not someone really small, like a tardigrade. I want to be able to see my companion. Probably someone adapted to the type of climate I live in--hello coyotes, bobcats, foxes, bear, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, mice. And I don't want to exclude birds, though I think I would want a very friendly type of bird for an animal companion--someone like a catbird or chickadee, or like the starling that drank the last of my sister's wine the other day.


5. Favorite museum?

Without a doubt, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Anyone else like some questions?

In Japan, today through January 24 is the microseason called "butterburs bud"

One fond memory I have of living in Japan as a family was the 60-plus-year-old director of the daycare where my kids went teaching me how to prepare fuki. In spring you could buy it in markets, but it's also a wild herb that you can forage. I remember where we foraged ours: there was this cut-through with a little bridge, and then you came up behind/beside the Watanabes' shop, which was a sort of convenience store in their house. We bought our kerosine there. I think I still have the director's hard-to-read instructions somewhere--maybe stuck inside a Japanese cookbook. I hope so, anyway.

I've seen butterbur here and thought of picking it, but I've never done it because I'm afraid it might not be exactly the same plant. It also gets translated into English as "coltsfoot."

Here it is--not a bud, but vigorous leaves:


(source)

And here it is, prepared:


(source)

Wow, I guess when you cultivate it, it can get quite large! The stuff we picked is much, much smaller.


(source)

Wikipedia tells me that the plant known as butterbur in Massachusetts, Petasites hybridus, is also called "bog rhubarb, Devil's hat, and pestilence wort." Gotta love folk names.

Come away, human child, for the world is more full of leaves than you can ever know.



Come away to where the blackberries grow



Step in, step in deeper, into shadow. There are more fruits there, hidden, sweet, and black.



( Who and what were in this world? )

Cudjo’s parable
wakanomori was able to get for me Zora Neale Hurston's "Cudjo's Own Story of the last African Slaver," published in the Journal of Negro History 12, no 4 (October 1927), 648-63. He remembers his village in Africa and talks about life in America.

At the end he told a parable about his wife Albine dying before him:

I will make a parable.

Cudjo and Albine have gone to Mobile together.

They get on the train to go home and sit side by side. The conductor comes along and says to Cudjo: “Where are you going to get off?” and Cudjo answers: “Mount Vernon.”

The conductor then asks Albine: “Where are you going to get off?” and she replies: “Plateau.”

Mount Vernon is several miles beyond Plateau.

Cudjo is surprised. He turns to Albine and asks: “Why, Albine! How is this? Why do you say you are going to get off at Plateau ?”

She answers: “I must get off.” The train stops and Albine gets off. Cudjo stays on. He is alone. But old Cudjo has not reached Mount Vernon yet. He is still journeying on.

I was moved by the parable, especially having seen with my own eyes that the cemetery is at Plateau.

( an onion )

Not-absinthe
Absinthe is a rich green, so I’m told. I’ve never seen it. It’s made from wormwood, Artemisia absinthium. An infusion of wormwood’s cousin mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris, makes a similar rich, green drink.

Doesn’t it look like a potion? It is a potion.

Over the past couple of days I saw stars caught in the long grass. Not firefly stars, flower stars.




And the cattails are ready for pollen gathering. We had bright yellow pollen pancakes yesterday. ... yes, it's hard to escape the sexual implications of gathering pollen seeing as it's not just imagery, it's EXACTLY the thing imaged (if I can be oblique and direct at the same time...) I can totally see pollen gathering as a fertility rite.






( the fallen )

Finally, let me share with you a clothes collection box, sponsored by an organization whose slogan has always creeped me out:


( We turn used clothing into new kids through education! )


Seriously, how creepy is that? A golem made of used clothes. Desperate childless couples who make a child out of used clothes. Sweatshop owners who create children out of used clothes... to work in their sweatshops making clothes! (ooh, the circularity...)