Asakiyume mita

Happy mid-Autumn festival, one day late! Please enjoy this Google doodle that was only shown to people in East Asia. In the United States Google was busy urging us to register to vote.

It was a lovely harvest moon--with a bite taken out of it in these parts, due to a partial lunar eclipse. Like a ghostly version of the moon cakes made in its honor.

Some time ago I learned how to ask questions using "Why" in Tikuna. I gave some sample questions (Why is the cat happy? Why are you tired?) and my tutor went to town, giving me *lots* of why questions. There was a theme...

Why don't you listen?
Why don't you listen to your grandparents when they want to give you advice?
Why don't you pay attention to your parents?
Why did you go without telling me?
Why don't you want to?
Why don't you want to eat?

There were others that didn't fit the theme, but those were so salient! I had a feeling these were things my tutor had heard a lot. If I memorize those, I will know how to nag a teenager in Tikuna ;-)

Recently my college-aged nephew was at my house, helping me smash hickory nuts. We smashed enough to get a cup of nutmeats, and then we made a hickory nut shortbread, yum. I sent a picture of my nephew to my tutor, who remarked that he was cute. I said he was two years younger than she is, just twenty years old. "Veinte añitos!" she said, "Waooo!" --I like that Spanish can do that: turn years (años) into cute little years (añitos). Twenty cute little years. Twenty adorable years. Twenty yearlets.

A moonflower is like a morning glory, but it opens in the evening and blooms through the night. It's very fragrant. In Japanese they're yūgao (夕顔), "evening faces." In Genji Monogatari, the woman called Yūgao gets one of the most exciting stories--attacked by a jealous spirit of one of Genji's other lovers. Genji actually draws a sword and everything! (This is remarkable because mainly men in Genji Monogatari don't get any more active than slipping into women's sleeping quarters or taking walks.)

Here is a moonflower in the evening, preparing to open:



Here it is, later in the evening, unfurling





( another )

And here is the moon, a night before full, at 3 am



And the moonflower (this time taken with a flash), fully open

The full moon is a golden coin at the bottom of night's pocket, and the black tree branches are the seam of the pocket.

The gibbous moon is an egg, in the nest of the night hen. Her black feathers are speckled with white stars.

The half moon is a thimble on the black finger of night.

The crescent moon is a fingernail from that same finger.

Yesterday The Writer's Almanac featured the poem "Summer Night," by Connie Wanek. I was transfixed by the first image:

The street lamp looks down;
it has dropped something
and spends the whole night
searching around its feet.

The light it has dropped illuminates its feet, but the street lamp sees only grass and asphalt and senses that this is not what it's searching for.


Street Lamp 2 by ANDYWPHOTO on Flickr.

Also yesterday, I saw a loneflower:



The outbuilding's roof has collapsed and one wall has crumbled, but the sentinel doesn't abandon the post. In time the loneflower will hang its head . . . it will be searching around its feet for something.

And yamamanama saw a performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream in which a player played the moon by wielding a cane. The moon with a cane. The moon, puttin' on the Ritz . . .



PS, and unrelated, but I love it, so: The Boy Who Cried Wolves