Asakiyume mita

I love hand-clapping games; they're such a wonderful example of truly folk transmission through the generations.

While I was visiting my friends in Leticia, two of the kids were doing one. The rhyme went

Choco, choco
la, la,
choco, choco
te, te,
choco-la
choco-te
chocolate!

You clapped sometimes with the palms of your hands and sometimes with the backs of your hands--it was great!



When I got back to Medellín, at one point Wakanomori and I passed a line of people waiting for pancakes at a pop-up pancake event. In the line was a girl who was teaching this rhyme to her dad.

Do you have any hand-clapping games you remember doing, or seeing others do, when you were younger?

(With this job I'm likely to be mainly a Friday-Saturday-Sunday poster, but I'll try to be reading and commenting on people's blogs on other days.)

The crow and the dove
This morning was *warm* and although the hills are still waiting to spring alive again, there are hints of life all around--pussy willows, birdsong. On a morning run saw a magnificent crow up so close, close enough to admire his bill and exchange glances and hear the wind whistling in his wings as he flew off.

Later I heard a distant radio--but it wasn't so distant: it was on the other side of the road, and there was a woman sitting there on her stoop in her bathrobe, enjoying the sun slowly climbing above the trees on the hill across the road. I waved and she smiled and waved. Something like that is as good as sharing a whole meal with someone.

Then a little further on in the run a mourning dove flew up into a tree and the sun shone through its white tail feathers, glowing ... After the flood the dove and the crow became neighbors and told their kids stories about Noah's crazy habits.

music
And music. I have been listening to lots of cumbia and now want to learn to dance it, couples-style. Past me is looking at present me in frank amazement. There there, past self. It's all good. But what I'm sharing here are two songs that are not only nice to listen too but also have cool videos. The first I discovered through Afropop Worldwide: "Tenemos Voz"--very cool animation and a great song.

And "Zapata se Queda" is spectacular in a different way.

Gender of the Day
There's Twitter bot called @genderofthdday that comes up with different amusing combos each day. "The gender of the day is the smell of stale beer and the sound of a dial-up modem"; "The gender of the day is a dragon with a lute." (Actually, I'm realizing as I trawl the back pages that it gives several per day.)

A couple of days ago it gave "The gender of the day is a tired basilisk on a pegasus," and I thought that one needed an illustration, so:

This doesn't qualify as a poem; it's just playing with sound.


誰のせい？ [dare no sei/ whose fault]?

no sé [I don't know]

say what?

no dice nada [says nothing]

dime [tell me]

だめ [dame/ no way]

Spanish Duolingo often has intriguing or provocative sentences for you to translate. This post's subject line was one I got last night:



(The girl plays with her shadow)

The child plays with her shadow
Jumping, jumping
To free her playmate
From the tether of her feet