Asakiyume mita

In this entry, osprey_archer talks about short films she's watched recently, and one of them, "Lost World," by Cambodian American director Kalyanee Mam, captivated me.

It's narrated by a young woman, Vy Phalla [surname comes first here], who lives on the island of Koh Sralau. The way of life there is threatened by sand dredging: sand is dredged in Cambodia and taken to add landmass in Singapore.

Scooping up Cambodia ...



... To create more Singapore




The film's write-up at shortoftheweek.com says, "Kalyanee Mam’s film encompasses vast juxtapositions in a slow-motion lament against environmental degradation, loss, and rapacious capitalism." Yes. It is that, powerfully.

But I was also there for foraging clams at low tide, in among the mangrove spiracles:





And for hopping from prop root to prop root, looking for snails (though the kids did complain about the mosquitos).



Beautiful place to live...



... very different from futuristic Singapore**



At one point Phalla sings a beautiful song about the mangroves. "The beauty of the mangrove forest / rivals the palace gardens" So right.

mangrove seedling



And Phalla goes to see the palace gardens, so to speak: in Singapore she visits an artificially created cloud forest. "Lost World," the exhibit is called. Please do not touch, the signs admonish. "Camelia," Phalla says. "I've only heard the name. Now I see its face."



Back in Cambodia, watching the dredgers, she says, "The law has given us all kinds of freedoms. Here we only have the right to sit, shed tears, and witness the destruction." ... I would like to say something in answer to that, but I think maybe the appropriate thing is to sit, witness, and maybe shed tears.

Thanks for sharing this with me, osprey_archer!

Lost World from Go Project Films on Vimeo.

**Don't take this entry to be anti-Singapore. You can point out a wrong practice without condemning a country (or person or organization or....) wholesale.

I have a plan: I am going to grow a mangrove. You can do it! I checked, and the Internet said yes. First step is to get the seed to sprout. It's possible this seed won't germinate as (a) I picked it (rather than it falling of its own accord--in other words, it may not be ripe yet) and (b) the seeds mustn't be allowed to dry out, and it might have, between the time I picked it and the time I hit upon this plan. But I'm hopeful. And if this seed doesn't work, I'll get another one. Somehow. I think you can order them.



And here is a lawn that is crying out for a thyme pun (I lost track of the thyme... I had all the thyme in the world... )

From a distance



Up close, with bonus clover



And lastly, during my travels this weekend, I saw mermen reclining at ease, while nearby children frolicked. Here is one of them:

sovay has a beautiful entry about walking through a salt marsh on Cape Cod (it includes the tale of the crab who is a baseball fan--but what team? Probably Red Sox, Cape Cod being in Massachusetts, but it could be a contrarian/free-spirited crab, in which case who knows? Maybe even Yankees) and her observations spur me to write about the crabs we met among the mangroves.

We first encountered crabs walking on a boardwalk at the Anne Kolb Nature Center at lowish tide.

"They're blue!" wakanomori said, and it's true: many of the crabs are blue crabs:



But there are also tiny mangrove tree crabs, which hug mangrove prop roots or branches, always hiding shyly on the side away from you. I didn't get a photo, but you can see some here.

At low tide, the mud is dotted with crabs' holes, and there's a percussive, multi-pitched sound of popping as they go in and out of them. Some of the holes aren't really holes; they're tubular sculptures made by natural potters without the benefit of a wheel.

And here is a swarm of tiny crabs--these are along the shore of Chokoloskee Bay by Everglades City [which is small town, not a city]--running away from my approach, probably screaming "Huuumaaaaan!!!" the way a crowd of people would scream "Shaaaaark!!"

Sovay talked about the color of the water where she was, "a cloudy lime-juice green, sun-shot and silt-dusted," and it made me think of the many colors of water we saw.

Green...



Red ...



Golden-gray



Olive-brown



... and now I really want to post about mangroves.