Asakiyume mita

Over on Mastodon I was made aware of the existence of this beautiful little zine, done in the traditional way (all printed on a single sheet of paper), Meditations with Insects: An Art of Noticing, so I decided to order it.

It came in a brown envelope with drawings of a beetle, small bird, and owl on it, and the sender was "Unfolding Connections."



It was everything I hoped for and more. The main text directs readers to quiet, curious attention to creatures often ignored or disliked:



And then, wonder of wonders, there's text on the reverse side, too: quotes about recognizing and appreciating the presence and wisdom of other beings--unfolding connections to make ;-)



That quote has a typo, but it's the one that got me choked up reading it aloud to Wakanomori.

I really loved this one, too:

"the world is full of persons
only some of them human
and life is always lived in
relationship with others"

--Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World

The creator, Kristian Brevik, has a Patreon, and he also makes lanterns of sea creatures that when lit up show the creatures' skeletons. Seems like a very cool guy.

And here's a photo from a week or so ago of some bright yellow coltsfoot pushing up through the leaf litter.



... I offer these as necessary nourishment in the harrowing landscape we're navigating right now.

mallorys_camera put me onto La Chimera, the story of a haunted English archaeologist working with a gang of small-time Italian tomb robbers (tombaroli), digging up Etruscan artifacts and selling them to Spartaco, an mysterious black-market art dealer. It was so moving--I saw it alone first (but not quite alone: I took the photo I have on my desk of Lloyd Alexander and showed him the last few minutes of it, because I knew, knew, knew that he would understand and love the ending ). Then I got wakanomori to watch it with me, then I put my dad onto it.

mallorys_camera speaks about the film beautifully here, but the line I want to seize on in what she writes is this:

Its sense of place is strong as is its sense of temporal duality, a feeling that the past is so strong, nothing is there to stop it from consuming the present.

The dead and the living are equally present. Arthur, the Englishman, is balanced between their worlds. Except actually their worlds aren't even really separate.

Things keep changing, depending on the light they're in, depending on whose hands they rest in, depending on who's just spoken, depending on the season. Tomb robbing seems, prima facie, a bad thing, but when you see the small, ancient items of daily life in the hands of the tombaroli and their friends, it doesn't feel that way. It's like the items are living again and cherished again--until a character named Italia (great name for someone speaking out about the theft of the patrimony of the country, but also ironic! Because she's from Brazil) calls direct attention to the enormity of what they're doing:

What are they going to do? Steal from the souls? ... Those things aren't made for human eyes.

And then your vision swings around to desecration, destruction. Light hits ancient paintings of birds and a sheen of something, some magic or divinity, melts away from them. Ordinary people ("they weren't all pharaohs," one of the tumbaroli points out) speak plaintively of their missing grave goods ("There was also a golden fibula ... it meant a lot to me").

It's a very sensual film. You feel the cold. You feel the wet. You feel the warmth and light. The sound of birds is always with you.

Some words that are spoken near the end of the movie, by a character who's transformed an abandoned building, really lingered with me:

It didn't belong to anyone or it belonged to everyone ... [This is] only a temporary setup. But life itself is temporary.

It's a current film, so you have to pay to see it, but it is so, so worth it.

The teacher I used to work with in Holyoke asked me back to give a talk on writing to her high school-aged students, who are working on personal narratives. These are all kids for whom regular high school hasn't worked out, but they are still fighting for an education and a future, and the teachers at this program are 100 percent dedicated to helping them with that.

This happened in front of the building housing the program. This is these kids' daily life.

We talked about what makes writing hard, and how you have to strive to write in a way that your readers will understand and feel what you're sharing--even if your reader is only your future self. It's too easy to be cryptic or use a sort of shorthand that speaks to you in the moment but not later. And of course if your audience is going to include people other than yourself, you have to work even harder. Learning what you need to improve is good--but we also need reassurance and praise for what we're doing.

( the writing exercise I did with them )

Afterward, I answered questions and the talk drifted to (among other things) languages. I think I maybe went overboard talking about how learning languages made me positively high, but it led to a touching conversation on my way out with a student who confided that he'd started teaching himself Hebrew.

"Oh wow, Hebrew!" I said. "How did you choose that? Is it part of your heritage?"

"No. It's because of ... You know. The news. I thought of doing Arabic, too, but the letters seemed too hard."

I felt so much love for that kid in that moment. What a profound response to what's going on. What an instinct for healing.

So take heart, everyone. You can be a kid growing up in a neighborhood where stray bullets kill babies, and yet you're teaching yourself language to Tikkun Olam the hell out of our broken world.

On December 14 wakanomori shared a Guardian article with me about Joaquim Melo, the 64-year-old owner of a remarkable bookstore in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon. The bookstore, Banca do Largo,

serves as a refuge for Amazonian writers and activists alike, pushing to protect the region from exploitation.​ By promoting local literature, particularly works by Indigenous writers, Melo believes he can help spread new ideas about societal organisation and the environment that are different from the capitalistic frameworks prevalent in the west.

Photo of the bookshop, from its website:



I was delighted--I went looking for more and found this video (in Portuguese) about the place. You might click on it just to hear the ambient noise--birds, animals, people, and traffic. And you'll also get to hear Mr. Melo talking <3

I started following the bookstore's Instagram, which updated rather overwhelmingly frequently, always with pictures of Mr. Melo with his customers--locals and tourists alike.

( smiling faces )

Then--nothing! I attributed that to algorithm bullshit. But then I went looking and discovered that the account had posted a death notice--Mr. Melo passed away on New Year's Day.

On the death notice was a quote from Chico Buarque (whom Wikipedia tells me is a Brazilian singer-songwriter):

Não há dor que dura para sempre!
Tudo é vário. Temporário. Efêmero.
Nunca somos, sempre estamos.

(There's no pain that lasts forever!
Everything is various. Temporary. Ephemeral.
We never are, we always are ...

I love what Spanish and Portuguese make possible linguistically by having a permanent-state verb "to be" and a temporary-state verb "to be." Because it's so true: we're never an immutable thing, we're always changing. We are dot dot dot

Sometimes you learn of a person just 18 days before they leave the world. Judging from the comments on the post of his death notice, he was well beloved. I hope his bookshop is able to continue.

Wakanomori and I went walking with a friend at the Quabbin Reservoir, and we came to a little pool that was alive with frogs, swimming around in the melting water above the ice still covering the pool. Amazing! Aren't they cold blooded? But they didn't seem to mind the icewater--they swam powerful breaststrokes this way and that in the three inches of water above the ice.

Wakanomori took this video. You have to turn the sound up very high in order to hear them, probably. Unfortunately, no closeups of the athletic swimmers, but imagine them with long thin arms and legs and graceful webbed feet and hands, swimming here and there, and singing.

I like how she fades away. As I said last entry, it's fan art for Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, but it works for what I was aiming for with the end of Lagoonfire, too.


After one rain...



After two

I had a lovely time with sartorias this past weekend, a consequence of which is that I haven't been online much at all, and may only slowly catch up with people's entries.

sartorias brought me cactus candy--and cactus honey--and cactus marmalade! All delicious. I AM HAPPY TO EAT CACTUS!

And she taught me some yoga, and it was so right and good, it made me cry a little.

( you were always nice to me )

( chestnuts and horse chestnuts )

Some treasures: in the pocket of my sweater are silvery mica and white marble from my walk in Holland Glen, back on Saturday. And on the dashboard of the car is a milkweed pod, spilling milkweed seeds--ballet dancers in long white skirts, like in Fantasia--a Swan Lake corps de ballet. More anon. Work calls--not to mention everyone's blogs! I'll get there, friends.