languages-lifeways-connections
Nov. 20th, 2023 09:37 amIt was a peak linguistic delight to listen to a presentation, given in Portuguese by a charismatic Colombian researcher named Mayra Ricardo Zuluaga, on a film she and a Tikuna scholar (meaning, in this case, a scholar who is Tikuna) named Sandra Fernández Sebastián had made about huito (in Tikuna, é), the fruit that's so important in Tikuna culture. It makes a deep, blue-black dye, and painting this on you confers protection and blessings. It's used on babies for this purpose, and in coming-of-age ceremonies and at other important events. (And/but it can be given more casually, too: I got to grate huito, squeeze the pulp, and dye my hands with it.) The film was in Spanish, with some phrases in Tikuna.
huito/é (screenshot from the film)
grated huito/é (my own photo)
I really loved both the film (which you can see here) and Mayra's talk (which you can see here). Mayra describes going to meet Sandra with all the focus of someone educated in the European-heritage way, and Sandra got her to slow. down. The two spent time together, got to know each other, and Mayra got to learn in a different way. "Reading for the Magütá (autonym for Tikuna) doesn't begin with books, it begins with the body," she said, and "a child reads the threads of the forest."
reading the threads of the forest (screenshot from the film)
And Sandra says about maintaining the Magütá/Tikuna language, "If one doesn't talk the language, well, one loses the land,** because our mother tongue is the way we communicate with those spirits who don't speak Spanish."
Sandra harvesting huito/é (screenshot from the film)
I found a PDF made in conjunction with the film which contained contact information, so I sent a thank-you email to the two creators, and Mayra wrote back! And she linked me to more language-learning materials, records from an online class offered a couple of years ago by a French researcher. Who of course conducts the class in French! I had laugh (and thank my lucky stars I learned French in high school). A bouquet of languages to learn another language.
The butterfly is a blue morpho--if it opened up its wings, you would see the brilliant blue. And the pink wall is one wall of the Museo Etnográfico in Leticia. (screenshot from the film)
...In the European-heritage way of learning things. While meanwhile, with my friend and tutor in Leticia, we go slow, and I learn through friendly conversation. We're a continent apart, so we're not walking together, but we ask each other, "What are you doing right now?" "Numa, tacu tai cu u?" (there should be bunches of diacritics on those vowels, but my teacher is pretty haphazard about them, and I'm not sure with my ears about what they represent, so... ) or "What are you cooking?" "Tacu tai cui feim?" And then we answer each other, and we get a big laugh if we're cooking the same thing, which has happened.
**she says "territorio," but she's meaning everything that goes with territory/land: connection, sense of self, tradition, way of living.
huito/é (screenshot from the film)
grated huito/é (my own photo)
I really loved both the film (which you can see here) and Mayra's talk (which you can see here). Mayra describes going to meet Sandra with all the focus of someone educated in the European-heritage way, and Sandra got her to slow. down. The two spent time together, got to know each other, and Mayra got to learn in a different way. "Reading for the Magütá (autonym for Tikuna) doesn't begin with books, it begins with the body," she said, and "a child reads the threads of the forest."
reading the threads of the forest (screenshot from the film)
And Sandra says about maintaining the Magütá/Tikuna language, "If one doesn't talk the language, well, one loses the land,** because our mother tongue is the way we communicate with those spirits who don't speak Spanish."
Sandra harvesting huito/é (screenshot from the film)
I found a PDF made in conjunction with the film which contained contact information, so I sent a thank-you email to the two creators, and Mayra wrote back! And she linked me to more language-learning materials, records from an online class offered a couple of years ago by a French researcher. Who of course conducts the class in French! I had laugh (and thank my lucky stars I learned French in high school). A bouquet of languages to learn another language.
The butterfly is a blue morpho--if it opened up its wings, you would see the brilliant blue. And the pink wall is one wall of the Museo Etnográfico in Leticia. (screenshot from the film)
...In the European-heritage way of learning things. While meanwhile, with my friend and tutor in Leticia, we go slow, and I learn through friendly conversation. We're a continent apart, so we're not walking together, but we ask each other, "What are you doing right now?" "Numa, tacu tai cu u?" (there should be bunches of diacritics on those vowels, but my teacher is pretty haphazard about them, and I'm not sure with my ears about what they represent, so... ) or "What are you cooking?" "Tacu tai cui feim?" And then we answer each other, and we get a big laugh if we're cooking the same thing, which has happened.
**she says "territorio," but she's meaning everything that goes with territory/land: connection, sense of self, tradition, way of living.
"I'm teaching myself Hebrew"
Oct. 23rd, 2023 03:07 pmThe 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.
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.
wrinkled wing
Sep. 19th, 2023 12:52 pmI've spend the last two-and-a-half days thinking about and trying to care for a butterfly who came out of its crysalis with a malformed wing. It's as if something got wrapped around the wing and pinched it. Here's the picture I took on the day I noticed it (two days ago):
That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.
So it was doomed. It was never going to be flying anywhere. Butterfly raising web pages told me I could make a pet out of it, or I could euthanize it (methods described, nothing awful but the concept was very depressing)--or, unstated, but clearly a choice, I could just leave it be, in which case it would die all on its own.
It was such a sunny day. This is life in the world as a butterfly, friend, I wanted to say. You can't fly, so your life is destined to be quite brief, but I hope you really love this sun. It must feel strange not to be a caterpillar anymore.
Then yesterday was rainy and cold. The butterfly hung on to its spot all day. I brought it flowers because one thing the butterfly raising pages said was you could offer a newly hatched butterfly an array of flowers. But it was too cold a day, maybe, for the butterfly to try to test out the flowers. And I don't know how long the nectar stays nectar-y after the flowers are cut.
Today is sunny (ish), and the butterfly was walking about a little. I read on the butterfly pages about making a honey-water or sugar-water mixture. Put it in a saucer and let them taste it with their feet, the page said. When they realize what it is, they will drink some, if they feel like it.
( two more butterfly pictures, with the flowers I tried tempting it with )
So I made some honey-water and held it where the butterfly could taste it, and it did taste it, and then climbed onto my hand--but when I lifted my hand, it fell fluttering off--but then gamely caught hold of a twig and started climbing up again. I tried again to interest it in the honey-water, and again it climbed onto my hand. I thought I'd carry it over to a stand of cosmos--then it could do the butterfly thing of drinking nectar, have another experience of life as a butterfly before it died. So I walked very slowly and carefully, and the butterfly sat on my hand, calm.
And then a big gust of wind came and carried it off, I don't know where. I looked around my yard, but couldn't see it. But I'm thinking, this means it even--sort of--experienced flight, a little.
I'm glad to have known this butterfly.
Meanwhile, I have a chrysalis on the siding of my house that's just about ready to hatch. I hope it will be healthy and able to fly.
That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.
So it was doomed. It was never going to be flying anywhere. Butterfly raising web pages told me I could make a pet out of it, or I could euthanize it (methods described, nothing awful but the concept was very depressing)--or, unstated, but clearly a choice, I could just leave it be, in which case it would die all on its own.
It was such a sunny day. This is life in the world as a butterfly, friend, I wanted to say. You can't fly, so your life is destined to be quite brief, but I hope you really love this sun. It must feel strange not to be a caterpillar anymore.
Then yesterday was rainy and cold. The butterfly hung on to its spot all day. I brought it flowers because one thing the butterfly raising pages said was you could offer a newly hatched butterfly an array of flowers. But it was too cold a day, maybe, for the butterfly to try to test out the flowers. And I don't know how long the nectar stays nectar-y after the flowers are cut.
Today is sunny (ish), and the butterfly was walking about a little. I read on the butterfly pages about making a honey-water or sugar-water mixture. Put it in a saucer and let them taste it with their feet, the page said. When they realize what it is, they will drink some, if they feel like it.
( two more butterfly pictures, with the flowers I tried tempting it with )
So I made some honey-water and held it where the butterfly could taste it, and it did taste it, and then climbed onto my hand--but when I lifted my hand, it fell fluttering off--but then gamely caught hold of a twig and started climbing up again. I tried again to interest it in the honey-water, and again it climbed onto my hand. I thought I'd carry it over to a stand of cosmos--then it could do the butterfly thing of drinking nectar, have another experience of life as a butterfly before it died. So I walked very slowly and carefully, and the butterfly sat on my hand, calm.
And then a big gust of wind came and carried it off, I don't know where. I looked around my yard, but couldn't see it. But I'm thinking, this means it even--sort of--experienced flight, a little.
I'm glad to have known this butterfly.
Meanwhile, I have a chrysalis on the siding of my house that's just about ready to hatch. I hope it will be healthy and able to fly.
narrow gangplanks/walkways, boats
Sep. 4th, 2022 02:15 pmI realized it's September, which means this little access stream, which is where we boarded all boats to get to the Amazon, will have dried up, or is about to. You can walk to those stilt houses across the way. (And those stilts tell you how high the water will get. Right now, though, the people in those houses are cultivating crops** that will mature in the months between now and the river rising, using the 40 centimeters of alluvial deposits the Amazon leaves behind as it recedes.)
Note: I'm linking all these photos from Flickr. You can click through to see them much larger.
And all the floating buildings in the photo below will have been pushed out to the main river, or are about to be. "How do people know when to make the move?" I asked. My guide shrugged. "They just decide."
But I want to call your attention to those planks that connect to the floating buildings to the shore. Notice how narrow and unsecured they are? Everyone is so casually badass here, just casually balancing on those like it's no big deal.
And, not to put too fine a point on things, but it rains a lot here, and as you can see in the photo below, things tend to be damp:
But the most casually badass walkway of all was the one I walked along the day I went solo (well, not solo: I had a husband-and-wife pair of guides, plus their youngest daughter, who was three--but I didn't have Wakanomori with me) to see the giant Victoria Regia waterlilies:
Way out in the distance, almost out of sight, is the river. And all this way where there's a walkway--that's how far the river is going to rise when it breathes in. And you can't tell how high up the walkway is, but it's about15 feet up [ETA: I think I'm exaggerating in memory. It felt high, but 15 feet is ... too high, as your reactions are making me realize. I wouldn't have been brave enough to walk it if it was 15 feet. It was taller than a person, but not taller than two people, which is what 15 feet would be. So let's say 8–9 feet up.] Please appreciate that the ~ single plank ~ for walking on is about 12 inches across and that there's no rail, just that rope on the right. And jolly good thing that rope is there, because guess what you have to do if, on the walk from the river to the reserve (or back the other way), you meet someone coming in the other direction? One or the other of you has to step on the platforms on which the planks are resting and lean back on that rope while the other people walk by! I experienced both other people giving way for me this way, and doing it myself for others.
(Also casually badass about the Amazon is machetes everywhere. Kids playing with machetes, a woman walking home carrying a wooden chair on her shoulder with a machete in her other hand. Or here, this machete currently at rest in this boat--see it nestled there?)
So many different sizes of boats. Bigger ones have canvas/plastic sheeting lashed up, like in this boat that's delivering eggs. That way when the rain comes, you can lower it and keep from getting so wet.
But the boat we went to see the water lilies in was a little one, like the one with the yellow roof in the photo below, with no side curtains:
On our way back to our boat, we knew a downpour was coming:
And it came, wind and buckets of rain. The husband half of the guide team and the boatman were up front, with only life vests as a rain barrier. The wife and I were in the back--she with her three-year-old on her lap--with a big blue tarp pulled up over the front of us. And in all that wind and rain, the three-year-old ... drifted off to sleep on her mother's lap. Perfect.
A few more lovely boats for you. You can see some are powered just by oars, but many have what I call dragonfly motors: a propeller at the end of a long stem, and then the actual motor part affixed to the boat. (You can see a dragonfly motor up close in this photo: the propeller is tucked into the boat right now because it's not in use.) You change the direction of the boat by swinging the propellor to one side or the other. But there are also boats with fixed motors, such as you see in the United States--we traveled in both sorts.
**rice, cassava, tomatoes, corn, soy, watermelon, Brazilian peanuts, black-eyed peas, and plantains, for example.
Note: I'm linking all these photos from Flickr. You can click through to see them much larger.
And all the floating buildings in the photo below will have been pushed out to the main river, or are about to be. "How do people know when to make the move?" I asked. My guide shrugged. "They just decide."
But I want to call your attention to those planks that connect to the floating buildings to the shore. Notice how narrow and unsecured they are? Everyone is so casually badass here, just casually balancing on those like it's no big deal.
And, not to put too fine a point on things, but it rains a lot here, and as you can see in the photo below, things tend to be damp:
But the most casually badass walkway of all was the one I walked along the day I went solo (well, not solo: I had a husband-and-wife pair of guides, plus their youngest daughter, who was three--but I didn't have Wakanomori with me) to see the giant Victoria Regia waterlilies:
Way out in the distance, almost out of sight, is the river. And all this way where there's a walkway--that's how far the river is going to rise when it breathes in. And you can't tell how high up the walkway is, but it's about
(Also casually badass about the Amazon is machetes everywhere. Kids playing with machetes, a woman walking home carrying a wooden chair on her shoulder with a machete in her other hand. Or here, this machete currently at rest in this boat--see it nestled there?)
So many different sizes of boats. Bigger ones have canvas/plastic sheeting lashed up, like in this boat that's delivering eggs. That way when the rain comes, you can lower it and keep from getting so wet.
But the boat we went to see the water lilies in was a little one, like the one with the yellow roof in the photo below, with no side curtains:
On our way back to our boat, we knew a downpour was coming:
And it came, wind and buckets of rain. The husband half of the guide team and the boatman were up front, with only life vests as a rain barrier. The wife and I were in the back--she with her three-year-old on her lap--with a big blue tarp pulled up over the front of us. And in all that wind and rain, the three-year-old ... drifted off to sleep on her mother's lap. Perfect.
A few more lovely boats for you. You can see some are powered just by oars, but many have what I call dragonfly motors: a propeller at the end of a long stem, and then the actual motor part affixed to the boat. (You can see a dragonfly motor up close in this photo: the propeller is tucked into the boat right now because it's not in use.) You change the direction of the boat by swinging the propellor to one side or the other. But there are also boats with fixed motors, such as you see in the United States--we traveled in both sorts.
**rice, cassava, tomatoes, corn, soy, watermelon, Brazilian peanuts, black-eyed peas, and plantains, for example.
La gran ceiba
Aug. 26th, 2022 08:10 pmThe kapok tree--Ceiba pentandra, ceiba in Spanish, is one of the three tallest types of tree in the rainforest. I have always dreamed of meeting one because...
When my kids were little, we were given The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry. Gorgeously illustrated, it's the story of a woodcutter in the Amazon who falls asleep by a huge kapok tree he's been asked to cut down. While he's asleep, all the creatures (including a human child) who depend on the tree visit him and whisper in his ear about what its loss will mean.
( from The Great Kapok Tree )
I loved that book so much that I apparently translated it into Japanese--something I forgot I'd done until Wakanomori discovered my manuscript, prior to our trip:
(I don't know if it had been translated at the time I did that--which would have been in the mid 1990s--but it's probably been professionally translated since.)
During our one day-long excursion, we spent some time on Lake Tarapoto (an offshoot of the Amazon--it's connected), and as we came near a massive strangler fig, I thought I saw a kapok behind it--the tree I saw had the same buttressed roots. "Is that a kapok?" I asked in my halting Spanish. "No, not that," the guide replied. "You want to see a kapok?" I said yes please, and we headed off to a different stretch of shore, where we scrambled up the mud and into the Actual Forest. We hopped from more-solid patch of ground to more-solid patch of ground, and after about 10 minutes, came to la gran ceiba.
Here's our guide by one of the buttress roots:
Those roots! In Aventura en el Amazonas, I learned that you can hit them to make a loud, carrying sound, and that's a way of communicating in the forest. Better than smoke signals, the mother of the main characters says, because smoke can't make it through the canopy, but the sound will travel.
Me, so happy
As it turns out, the supermarket that I went to every morning to buy yogurt drinks to take our malaria pills with was called "La gran ceiba." Like a fool, I failed to take a picture of it, and the only one on the internet (taken by Jerson Santiago Ramos, so I'm told) shows it all closed up:
Do you see, though, how the central pillar is the trunk and the crown of the tree has been painted overspreading the store? When I would go there, there would always be a woman sitting to the left of the store as you face it, selling bananas and other fruits and vegetables. The little panaderia to the right as you face it was great too; I got empanadas there a couple of times.
La gran ceiba es un verdadero árbol de milagros, a thing of beauty, sustaining multitudes.
When my kids were little, we were given The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry. Gorgeously illustrated, it's the story of a woodcutter in the Amazon who falls asleep by a huge kapok tree he's been asked to cut down. While he's asleep, all the creatures (including a human child) who depend on the tree visit him and whisper in his ear about what its loss will mean.
( from The Great Kapok Tree )
I loved that book so much that I apparently translated it into Japanese--something I forgot I'd done until Wakanomori discovered my manuscript, prior to our trip:
(I don't know if it had been translated at the time I did that--which would have been in the mid 1990s--but it's probably been professionally translated since.)
During our one day-long excursion, we spent some time on Lake Tarapoto (an offshoot of the Amazon--it's connected), and as we came near a massive strangler fig, I thought I saw a kapok behind it--the tree I saw had the same buttressed roots. "Is that a kapok?" I asked in my halting Spanish. "No, not that," the guide replied. "You want to see a kapok?" I said yes please, and we headed off to a different stretch of shore, where we scrambled up the mud and into the Actual Forest. We hopped from more-solid patch of ground to more-solid patch of ground, and after about 10 minutes, came to la gran ceiba.
Those roots! In Aventura en el Amazonas, I learned that you can hit them to make a loud, carrying sound, and that's a way of communicating in the forest. Better than smoke signals, the mother of the main characters says, because smoke can't make it through the canopy, but the sound will travel.
Me, so happy
As it turns out, the supermarket that I went to every morning to buy yogurt drinks to take our malaria pills with was called "La gran ceiba." Like a fool, I failed to take a picture of it, and the only one on the internet (taken by Jerson Santiago Ramos, so I'm told) shows it all closed up:
Do you see, though, how the central pillar is the trunk and the crown of the tree has been painted overspreading the store? When I would go there, there would always be a woman sitting to the left of the store as you face it, selling bananas and other fruits and vegetables. The little panaderia to the right as you face it was great too; I got empanadas there a couple of times.
La gran ceiba es un verdadero árbol de milagros, a thing of beauty, sustaining multitudes.
Paucar--Cacicus cela--káurë
Aug. 22nd, 2022 04:48 pmA lot of what we saw and learned in the Amazon is taking me a while to digest because it's filtered through Spanish: I scribbled things down that people told me, but now in slow time I have to check what I wrote, find out if I heard things correctly and understood them correctly.
I just discovered a wonderful thing. While we were in Puerto Nariño (the other major town, other than Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon)--a town, incidentally, with a large number of Tikuna (Magüta) residents, including our guide that day, Edgar--we heard some birds singing, birds that Edgar told us were called paucares. "They imitate the sounds of other birds. Like just now, they're imitating oropendola birds." He pointed to long, hanging nests up in a tree. "They make those nests, and when they're finished with them, people like to use them for decorations."
(Pretty terrible photo; I must have been shooting into the sun)
"Because they're such clever imitators, indigenous people used to [or still do--I didn't catch the tense on this] feed their children the brains of the bird, so the children would grow up smart too, like the bird," he said.
I wanted to chase down what bird this is in English/Latin nomenclature, and lo and behold, it is the very bird that I picked for Káurë New Day to be named after in my story "New Day Dawning." I picked the bird because it was pretty and because I could find the Tikuna/Magüta name for it--and it turns out to be a very significant bird!
For example: we also learned that clans among the Tikuna/Magüta are divided among those with feathers and those without (traditionally, if you were in a clan with feathers, you could only marry someone from a clan without, and vice versa--this is not so much the case nowadays). I knew one of the feathered clans was the garza (Spanish word, not Magüta word), or heron, but it turns out paucar is another!
So Káurë New Day's name has all this extra resonance now--and I got to hear some of their namesake birds!
Another paucar story, popular in Peru: a little boy who loves spreading rumors and gossip about people is turned into a chatty bird--the first paucar. As a paucar, he continues spreading stories, but according to this version of the story, "Con el correr de los años, este pajarraco se ha convertido solo en anunciador de buenas noticias, de tal manera que cuando canta, la gente dice que algo bueno va a ocurrir"--over the years he takes to spreading only good news, so that people say that when he sings, something good will happen.
You can listen to another version of the story here (5-minute video in Spanish), and if you jump to 3:59, you can see káurë's familiar and pretty form. In this version too, he switches to spreading good news, so that seems to be the reputation of the bird.
This all makes me very happy!
I just discovered a wonderful thing. While we were in Puerto Nariño (the other major town, other than Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon)--a town, incidentally, with a large number of Tikuna (Magüta) residents, including our guide that day, Edgar--we heard some birds singing, birds that Edgar told us were called paucares. "They imitate the sounds of other birds. Like just now, they're imitating oropendola birds." He pointed to long, hanging nests up in a tree. "They make those nests, and when they're finished with them, people like to use them for decorations."
(Pretty terrible photo; I must have been shooting into the sun)
"Because they're such clever imitators, indigenous people used to [or still do--I didn't catch the tense on this] feed their children the brains of the bird, so the children would grow up smart too, like the bird," he said.
I wanted to chase down what bird this is in English/Latin nomenclature, and lo and behold, it is the very bird that I picked for Káurë New Day to be named after in my story "New Day Dawning." I picked the bird because it was pretty and because I could find the Tikuna/Magüta name for it--and it turns out to be a very significant bird!
For example: we also learned that clans among the Tikuna/Magüta are divided among those with feathers and those without (traditionally, if you were in a clan with feathers, you could only marry someone from a clan without, and vice versa--this is not so much the case nowadays). I knew one of the feathered clans was the garza (Spanish word, not Magüta word), or heron, but it turns out paucar is another!
So Káurë New Day's name has all this extra resonance now--and I got to hear some of their namesake birds!
Another paucar story, popular in Peru: a little boy who loves spreading rumors and gossip about people is turned into a chatty bird--the first paucar. As a paucar, he continues spreading stories, but according to this version of the story, "Con el correr de los años, este pajarraco se ha convertido solo en anunciador de buenas noticias, de tal manera que cuando canta, la gente dice que algo bueno va a ocurrir"--over the years he takes to spreading only good news, so that people say that when he sings, something good will happen.
You can listen to another version of the story here (5-minute video in Spanish), and if you jump to 3:59, you can see káurë's familiar and pretty form. In this version too, he switches to spreading good news, so that seems to be the reputation of the bird.
This all makes me very happy!
Tags:
inhale, exhale
Aug. 1st, 2022 08:48 pmI learned so much in the Amazon: one, that the river inhales and exhales: when it has breathed in deeply and its waters extend the farthest, tall trees are underwater and the fish feed on palm fruits. Maximum expansion is March. And then it exhales, shrinks-shrinks-shrinks, and temporary islands appear, and people rush out and take advantage of the 40 cm of rich soil the river has left to grow quick crops that can be harvested before the river rises and swallows the islands back up again. The river is at its lowest point in September--at which time you can walk to the island across from the pier where we got boats when we went out on the water (this is on a tiny tributary--one of our guides called it a creek--but it looked pretty big to us!)
I saw all the types of liminal houses: houses on stilts, floating houses, and house boats. Here is a floating house.
I have more stories to share (of course!) but we caught Covid (despite everything; we were vaxxed and masked to the max), so I'll probably still be a little scarce around here for a bit.
One more thing before I go: I loved how indoors and outdoors blended. Here's a coffee shop and bakery where we stopped on the way back from a bike ride:
I saw all the types of liminal houses: houses on stilts, floating houses, and house boats. Here is a floating house.
I have more stories to share (of course!) but we caught Covid (despite everything; we were vaxxed and masked to the max), so I'll probably still be a little scarce around here for a bit.
One more thing before I go: I loved how indoors and outdoors blended. Here's a coffee shop and bakery where we stopped on the way back from a bike ride:
trip countdown
Jul. 20th, 2022 02:34 pmBy this time on Friday--assuming no flight cancellations and no sudden-onset covid--Wakanomori and I will be on a plane to Colombia. We'll spend a day in Bogotá, staying at the same place we stayed in 2018, and then we'll hop on a plane to Leticia.
I blocked off this week from work so that I could be free to prepare for the trip, and the result is that I think I'm well prepared (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay--I have in fact purchased antiseptic ointment and band-aids, and I can feel the ~ scorn ~ of Markiyan Kamysh), but I have plenty of free time for my body to mount a huge pre-travel anxiety onslaught. It's beyond the ken of reason, just wave after wave of cortisol flooding my bloodstream, leaving me practically fainting. I've been through this before, so I know what to do, but even though I can defuse it or grapple it back into its box (choose your metaphor), it's always waiting to surge back.
Right now it's receded, so I can write this! Most recent thing I've done, taskwise, is load a couple of books onto my kindle for downtime when we're not watching macaws or river dolphins. Thanks to a recommendation fromskygiants, I'm taking Julie Czerneda's Survival, and thanks to a recommendation from Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, I'm taking Gina Cole's Na Viro, a work of Pacifikafuturism.
Fun fact that Wakanomori just shared: Bogotá is 4 degrees north of the equator, and Leticia is 4 degrees south. So we'll cross the equator! We'll maybe see Southern Hemisphere stars! (... I should have looked for them when I was in Timor-Leste, which is 8 degrees south of the equator, but I didn't.)
... The forest presses in all around. There's roads and houses, and then forest, and forest, and forest, and forest, on and on. Here's a screen shot from Tabatinga, the part of Leticia that's in Brazil (or you could call Leticia the part of Tabatinga that's in Colombia--you cross the street and you're in another country).
Even now, with my brain in cortisol overproduction, when I think about being in this green embrace, held so tightly, I feel as if I'm about to sprout wings.
I blocked off this week from work so that I could be free to prepare for the trip, and the result is that I think I'm well prepared (
sovay--I have in fact purchased antiseptic ointment and band-aids, and I can feel the ~ scorn ~ of Markiyan Kamysh), but I have plenty of free time for my body to mount a huge pre-travel anxiety onslaught. It's beyond the ken of reason, just wave after wave of cortisol flooding my bloodstream, leaving me practically fainting. I've been through this before, so I know what to do, but even though I can defuse it or grapple it back into its box (choose your metaphor), it's always waiting to surge back.Right now it's receded, so I can write this! Most recent thing I've done, taskwise, is load a couple of books onto my kindle for downtime when we're not watching macaws or river dolphins. Thanks to a recommendation from
skygiants, I'm taking Julie Czerneda's Survival, and thanks to a recommendation from Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, I'm taking Gina Cole's Na Viro, a work of Pacifikafuturism.Fun fact that Wakanomori just shared: Bogotá is 4 degrees north of the equator, and Leticia is 4 degrees south. So we'll cross the equator! We'll maybe see Southern Hemisphere stars! (... I should have looked for them when I was in Timor-Leste, which is 8 degrees south of the equator, but I didn't.)
... The forest presses in all around. There's roads and houses, and then forest, and forest, and forest, and forest, on and on. Here's a screen shot from Tabatinga, the part of Leticia that's in Brazil (or you could call Leticia the part of Tabatinga that's in Colombia--you cross the street and you're in another country).
Even now, with my brain in cortisol overproduction, when I think about being in this green embrace, held so tightly, I feel as if I'm about to sprout wings.
Taking the level-two Tetun course
Sep. 30th, 2021 10:39 amDuring the summer I took the level-one Tetun course (Tetun: the lingua franca in Timor-Leste) offered through Timorlink. It's an Australia-based program, but the teachers all have deep connections with Timor-Leste.
Next week I'm starting the level-two course, and--because life is stranger than fiction--my teacher is going to be none other than the inestimable Kirsty Sword Gusmão.
Life keeps thrilling me--I feel so lucky to be alive!
Next week I'm starting the level-two course, and--because life is stranger than fiction--my teacher is going to be none other than the inestimable Kirsty Sword Gusmão.
Life keeps thrilling me--I feel so lucky to be alive!
and today this arrives
May. 26th, 2021 01:14 pmSo, three days ago I made up a little story while I was mowing the lawn, the story in the previous entry.
As you'll recall if you caught that entry, it involved a cloisonné dagger.
So, I was more than a little freaked out when THIS arrived at the house just now.
...Admittedly, not for me but for Wakanomori, BUT STILL.
Of all the thank-you tchotchkes and souvenirs you could send from Korea ...
...It required a signature. The tiny young woman who delivered it was wearing silver bangles with bells around her ankles, and she commented on the fragrance at the front of the house, where we've let a lilac bush expand into all available space.
As you'll recall if you caught that entry, it involved a cloisonné dagger.
So, I was more than a little freaked out when THIS arrived at the house just now.
...Admittedly, not for me but for Wakanomori, BUT STILL.
Of all the thank-you tchotchkes and souvenirs you could send from Korea ...
...It required a signature. The tiny young woman who delivered it was wearing silver bangles with bells around her ankles, and she commented on the fragrance at the front of the house, where we've let a lilac bush expand into all available space.
further adventures of Little Heroine
Apr. 24th, 2021 08:10 amNeighbor on the left was working outside and playing his music, and it got to "When Doves Cry," so I went over to enjoy the song and chat for a moment, and Little Heroine was out too, training and expanding her skills with one I've always loved.
Look how her shadow dances along with her. Yeah, I know all our shadows always do, but I like the way hers can balance *sideways* on that 2 x 4.
Look how her shadow dances along with her. Yeah, I know all our shadows always do, but I like the way hers can balance *sideways* on that 2 x 4.
This is so sad Alexa play Despacito
Jan. 13th, 2020 05:13 pmAlthough *my* photos are still trapped in a disposable camera, Waka has kindly let me use his. Here is a shot of an iconic house (painted with the Puerto Rican flag) in La Perla, the neighborhood in San Juan where the video for "Despacito" was shot.
Let's take a brief moment to fully appreciate "Despacito." I chanced across it in May 2017, not knowing anything about it, and fell in love with both the song and video on one view. When it became the most-watched video on YouTube, I cheered. The world population today is approximately 7.5 billion. Views of that video are at 6.59 billion. Granted that there are people like me who've watched it numerous times and people in Tibet or Xinjiang who've never seen it, still: what unites the world today is "Despacito."
Maybe in part it's because La Perla is simultaneously familiar to people worldwide and--in the video--idealized: children and old folks and young sexy folks all hanging out together, all at ease. Unfortunately, that neighborhood, wedged between the seawall and the city walls of Old San Juan, is *very* vulnerable to storms, and the people living in it don't have many financial resources. When Hurricane Maria came through, it was devastated. As we all remember, aside from tossing out rolls of paper towels, the current administration couldn't have cared less about disaster relief to the island as a whole, and what relief there was didn't make it to La Perla--the people there recovered by helping each other out.
(This I heard generally from people I talked to about the hurricane: everyone survived the extended lack of power with help from their neighbors and helping their neighbors.)
It turns out there's been a short film made about the neighborhood's recovery (osprey_archer, the director is a woman). It doesn't seem to be available for viewing online anywhere, but I hope to see it one day. Here's the trailer:
Next posts will be book reviews--the very marvelous The Wolf and the Girl and Time of Daughters 2.
Let's take a brief moment to fully appreciate "Despacito." I chanced across it in May 2017, not knowing anything about it, and fell in love with both the song and video on one view. When it became the most-watched video on YouTube, I cheered. The world population today is approximately 7.5 billion. Views of that video are at 6.59 billion. Granted that there are people like me who've watched it numerous times and people in Tibet or Xinjiang who've never seen it, still: what unites the world today is "Despacito."
Maybe in part it's because La Perla is simultaneously familiar to people worldwide and--in the video--idealized: children and old folks and young sexy folks all hanging out together, all at ease. Unfortunately, that neighborhood, wedged between the seawall and the city walls of Old San Juan, is *very* vulnerable to storms, and the people living in it don't have many financial resources. When Hurricane Maria came through, it was devastated. As we all remember, aside from tossing out rolls of paper towels, the current administration couldn't have cared less about disaster relief to the island as a whole, and what relief there was didn't make it to La Perla--the people there recovered by helping each other out.
(This I heard generally from people I talked to about the hurricane: everyone survived the extended lack of power with help from their neighbors and helping their neighbors.)
It turns out there's been a short film made about the neighborhood's recovery (
osprey_archer, the director is a woman). It doesn't seem to be available for viewing online anywhere, but I hope to see it one day. Here's the trailer:TRAILER La Perla After Maria from Butiq.Media on Vimeo.
Next posts will be book reviews--the very marvelous The Wolf and the Girl and Time of Daughters 2.
I was away but now I'm back
Jan. 10th, 2020 12:14 pmWakanomori and I went on a five-day holiday. We thought our phones would work in our destination--our phone plan said they would ... but they didn't! His at least worked for non-calling/texting purposes (e.g., taking photos, looking at internet) if we were in wifi range, but mine had decided to try to do an update and so it was a brick.
That's all right though, our destination was fascinating and fun anyway. It did, however, suffer bunches of earthquakes while we were there, including one that woke us up and kept our room shaking, although we were some 40 miles away, as the crow flies, from the epicenter. That quake was the worst in a century and cut all power everywhere.**
. . . Can you guess our destination?
**Fortunately for us, many people and establishments, having lived through a very, very extended power outage in the recent past, have generators--including the place we were staying and a number of nearby eateries. Many people don't, though, so there's this, or, for something completely based in the locale, there's this. I was grateful that even before the generator came on, the water was still running--near the epicenter, many people are without water.
Eventually I hope to have photos in some form to share, but in the meantime, here's a sketch of our street. I really stink at drawing cars, clearly (click through to see it bigger):
That's all right though, our destination was fascinating and fun anyway. It did, however, suffer bunches of earthquakes while we were there, including one that woke us up and kept our room shaking, although we were some 40 miles away, as the crow flies, from the epicenter. That quake was the worst in a century and cut all power everywhere.**
. . . Can you guess our destination?
**Fortunately for us, many people and establishments, having lived through a very, very extended power outage in the recent past, have generators--including the place we were staying and a number of nearby eateries. Many people don't, though, so there's this, or, for something completely based in the locale, there's this. I was grateful that even before the generator came on, the water was still running--near the epicenter, many people are without water.
Eventually I hope to have photos in some form to share, but in the meantime, here's a sketch of our street. I really stink at drawing cars, clearly (click through to see it bigger):
Back from Bogotá, Colombia
Jun. 3rd, 2018 08:53 amIt was a wonderful, wonderful trip--in just ten days I made some friends that it had me practically in tears to leave. It was so wonderful that this morning (we got in at 10 pm last night and weren't back at our house until 2 am), I put on my jeans from the trip because they still have the smell of Hotel Casa de la Vega, where we stayed, and I want to stay wrapped up in that. We brought home a big brick of panela (condensated cane juice), and I'll see about making agua panela this morning, like Señora Lucy did for us one morning.
I'll slowly be catching up with people's entries--very slowly.
I'll slowly be catching up with people's entries--very slowly.
upcoming trip
May. 14th, 2018 07:29 amI'm under the gun with work right now, but I have an adventure to look forward to: Wakanomori and I enjoyed the landscapes of La Niña and Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas so much that were traveling to Colombia on May 23, returning very late on June 2. Oh boy! Time to test out two-years-and-a-bit of Duolingo Spanish! But hey, when I very-first traveled to Japan, that's about how much Japanese I had, and I had considerably less Tetun when I went to East Timor. Anyway, I have an ice breaker, a question to ply people with: "Cuentame una historia de este lugar."
"Yeah," said a friend of mine, "but will you understand the response?" Good question. Maybe in bits and pieces? Fragments? Especially if they speak.... wait for it.... DES... PA.... CITO!
Sorry, sorry. The truth is, I really love that song. Me and several billon other people--currently 5.1 BILLION VIEWS on Youtube. Woo!
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee are Puerto Rican. Have a different song that I also love, by a Colombian singer, Kiño, assisted by Jennifer Arenas and Elmece. It's "Sueños cumplidos," and it was the music that played at happy moments in Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas**
ETA--All of which to say, I will likely not be reading or posting much, if at all, during the days of the trip.
In unrelated news, but noteworthy for anyone who reads this on LJ: my paid account will expire while we're gone. I'm letting it lapse: I pay for the account over at DW, and I've decided not to pay both places. This means if you're reading at LJ, you will start to be assaulted by all manner of ads. There'll always be a link at the bottom of the entry to the original post on Dreamwidth, so you're welcome to come read here if you prefer an ad-free experience.
**Incidentally, I'm reading the story of her life (v...e...r...y slowly, which great help from a dictionary app), upon which the telenovela was based, and dang, but a lot of the things featured in the telenovela actually did happen.
"Yeah," said a friend of mine, "but will you understand the response?" Good question. Maybe in bits and pieces? Fragments? Especially if they speak.... wait for it.... DES... PA.... CITO!
Sorry, sorry. The truth is, I really love that song. Me and several billon other people--currently 5.1 BILLION VIEWS on Youtube. Woo!
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee are Puerto Rican. Have a different song that I also love, by a Colombian singer, Kiño, assisted by Jennifer Arenas and Elmece. It's "Sueños cumplidos," and it was the music that played at happy moments in Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas**
ETA--All of which to say, I will likely not be reading or posting much, if at all, during the days of the trip.
In unrelated news, but noteworthy for anyone who reads this on LJ: my paid account will expire while we're gone. I'm letting it lapse: I pay for the account over at DW, and I've decided not to pay both places. This means if you're reading at LJ, you will start to be assaulted by all manner of ads. There'll always be a link at the bottom of the entry to the original post on Dreamwidth, so you're welcome to come read here if you prefer an ad-free experience.
**Incidentally, I'm reading the story of her life (v...e...r...y slowly, which great help from a dictionary app), upon which the telenovela was based, and dang, but a lot of the things featured in the telenovela actually did happen.
The Bird Island Boat Tour
Jul. 9th, 2017 02:22 pmWe didn't set out with any plan do anything like a boat tour, and when we saw a brochure in a visitors' center somewhere, featuring a puffin wearing a captain's hat and a promise of seeing puffins, we thought it would be fun, but still it wasn't something we were actually planning on doing.
( conversation, legends, and bird information under the cut )
My attempts at photographing puffins, razorsbills, bald eagles, black guillmonts ("white wing patches, and sexy red legs" was how Ian taught us to recognize them), and cormorants hanging their wings to drain and dry were hopeless, so I'll post a couple of the Van Schaiks' own photos:
puffins!
razorbills
... and share my sketch of some seals instead. The scribbled note says "Mark said, when I said that they have dog faces, that his dad said the males have dog faces and the females have horse faces."
1 I can't find any corroboration for this legend elsewhere, and I may have mangled it--but anyway, it makes a good story. (The closest thing I find is the remarks of John MacGregor, published in 1828, remarking about fishermen on the other side of Cape Breton, that they
( conversation, legends, and bird information under the cut )
My attempts at photographing puffins, razorsbills, bald eagles, black guillmonts ("white wing patches, and sexy red legs" was how Ian taught us to recognize them), and cormorants hanging their wings to drain and dry were hopeless, so I'll post a couple of the Van Schaiks' own photos:
puffins!
razorbills
... and share my sketch of some seals instead. The scribbled note says "Mark said, when I said that they have dog faces, that his dad said the males have dog faces and the females have horse faces."
1 I can't find any corroboration for this legend elsewhere, and I may have mangled it--but anyway, it makes a good story. (The closest thing I find is the remarks of John MacGregor, published in 1828, remarking about fishermen on the other side of Cape Breton, that they
are Acadian French, who live by pursuing cod, herring, and seal fisheries, together with wrecking; at which last occupation, in consequence of the frequent shipwrecks about the entrance of the Gulf during the spring and fall, for several years, they are as expert as the Bermudians, or the people of the Bahamas.
Our secret stream (and phallic tower)
Jul. 4th, 2017 10:40 pmTwo posts in one day? Why not!
Wakanomori took me to Holyoke's secret stream, which runs beneath Interstate 91. There's a park there, but these boys preferred the actual stream (so did a chipmunk and an oriole I saw).
At one end of the present-day park is a closed roadway that leads up into an overgrown, abandoned park. If you climb up and up, you reach this tower that looks like it took its design cues from rude graffiti:
You can climb up a literally falling-apart concrete spiral staircase on the inside of the, uh, shaft, and up top there is a glorious view of the surrounding countryside. Which I didn't take a picture of! I was too busy recovering from the hair-raising ascent. Fortunately, Wakanomori took a picture. He also obliged me by taking pictures of the words of wisdom inscribed there, and of some of the community-created artwork at the base of the tower.
View of Mt. Tom in nearby Easthampton
Wisdom
Art
Wakanomori took me to Holyoke's secret stream, which runs beneath Interstate 91. There's a park there, but these boys preferred the actual stream (so did a chipmunk and an oriole I saw).
At one end of the present-day park is a closed roadway that leads up into an overgrown, abandoned park. If you climb up and up, you reach this tower that looks like it took its design cues from rude graffiti:
You can climb up a literally falling-apart concrete spiral staircase on the inside of the, uh, shaft, and up top there is a glorious view of the surrounding countryside. Which I didn't take a picture of! I was too busy recovering from the hair-raising ascent. Fortunately, Wakanomori took a picture. He also obliged me by taking pictures of the words of wisdom inscribed there, and of some of the community-created artwork at the base of the tower.
View of Mt. Tom in nearby Easthampton
Wisdom
Art
some images from the past week
Jun. 12th, 2017 11:56 amThings hanging from a line: it could be grape vines encumbering utility lines...
... or, this morning, it could be laundry. I like my new line-lifting pole (a fallen tree bough), it's like a mast.
Yesterday, our neighbor across the street was celebrating her daughter's college graduation. THIS GIANT RED BIG-RIG CAB was bringing all the boys to the yard. Literally.
Out back that same evening, ferns were green flames in the deep shade. I love ferns; they were my wings in childhood.
... or, this morning, it could be laundry. I like my new line-lifting pole (a fallen tree bough), it's like a mast.
Yesterday, our neighbor across the street was celebrating her daughter's college graduation. THIS GIANT RED BIG-RIG CAB was bringing all the boys to the yard. Literally.
Out back that same evening, ferns were green flames in the deep shade. I love ferns; they were my wings in childhood.
Tags:
Shopping cart number 2
Aug. 19th, 2015 12:34 pmWell, removing the one shopping cart must have registered as a gauntlet thrown down, because a new one appeared, and this time in the rosa multiflora, which will KILL YOU if you try to go through it--which meant, no lifting from underneath.
But today, I had three of the four forest creatures to help me, and they are grown into their power! We got that cart out in no time.
pondering the shopping cart
hands and hooks
lifting
up over the rail
success!
I'm a little worried about the cart tossers upping the ante... what if they dump two shopping carts? But sufficient unto the day...
But today, I had three of the four forest creatures to help me, and they are grown into their power! We got that cart out in no time.
pondering the shopping cart
hands and hooks
lifting
up over the rail
success!
I'm a little worried about the cart tossers upping the ante... what if they dump two shopping carts? But sufficient unto the day...
