Asakiyume mita

Have a seven-second ride down a road that leads from Amherst to B'town, MA:



Here is the tiny jungle I've been delighting myself with before my trip to the Actual Jungle. You can click through to see it larger.



And here are milkweeds, for pollinators' delectation:



And a sunset ... which is not true in its colors. My phone panics when faced with vividness: it renders the vivid red as yellow. WHY, phone? Why? In other news, I'm going to take an actual camera with me to the Amazon.



I still can't believe it's really going to happen. Every now and then I laugh out loud with delight.

I set off at 3:30 to deliver cookies to those of my children who live within driving distance (the other two live a continent and an ocean away--a different continent and ocean depending on which direction you tackle the journey from). By 3:30 the light is already long, and by the time I was leaving from my first stop (4:10), the tips of the bare trees were already red from the setting sun.



It was a 30-minute journey south to the next stop, during which time the sky did such tantalizing things with pinks, purples, and golds that I was quite beside myself. "She was the kind of person for whom sunsets pose a driving hazard," said my internal narrator. Eyes on the road, Asakiyume!

Here's another song by Dona Onete, Lua Jaci--the beginning, when she's singing a cappella, is just beautiful, and the simple melancholy of the overall song really speaks to me right now.

The woman herself is quite wonderful. Here's the blurb about her and her 2017 album, Banzeiro, from Bandcamp:

Whether she’s championing gay rights, singing about the delights of indecent proposals or praising a former lover for his ‘crazy ways of making love’, Banzeiro is defined by Onete’s honest reflections on life, love and sex, as well as her delight in the everyday pleasures of life in the Amazon, whether that’s spicy seasoning, salty kisses or fishy-smelling water.

Formerly a history teacher, folklore researcher, union representative, culture secretary and children’s author - “I never thought I would be a singer” she claims - Onete recorded her debut album Feitiço Caboclo at 73. A cult figure in Brazil and an ambassador for Amazonian culture, the music she sings is a unique mix of rhythms from native Brazilians, African slaves and the Caribbean - epitomised in the joyous carimbós that are her trademark. (Source)

And here's a great quote from a 2019 piece in a Brazilian magazine:

Eu canto carimbó, bolero, rock. Faço o que eu quiser. Não sei o que desce na minha cabeça para fazer uma coisa assim... uma mulher da minha idade.
[I sing carimbó, bolero, rock. I do what I want. I don't know what gets into my head to make me do a thing like that ... a woman my age.] (Source)

I was on the road Friday and Saturday, and this beautiful sunset happened in front of me:

First hints



Our beautiful star, low on the horizon



The gauzy sunset sky



Golden mist rising on the sky ocean

There's a weathervane perched on the tip of the steeple of the Congregational Church in town--I thought at first it was a skeletal fish, but maybe it's just a decorative arrow.... but maybe it is a fish, swimming in the sky ocean.

The birds are not sea birds. Maybe they perch on the fish-arrow the way savannah birds perch on elephants. Maybe they just like the view. So high. Now that I know they cluster there, I look for them every time I pass the church.



And here's a photo of a reflection of the setting sun. It's actually a reflection of a reflection. If you look at this blog post through a mirror, you'll have added some extra layers.



I had some actual words-y content-y sorts of things to share, but pictures are good too. The other stuff comes and goes, and there's always something new. Oh, hey, but one other thing: at the laundromat the other day, I saw a woman, helped by her little son, empty the dollar changer of dollars and put in a whole tubful of quarters--presumably ones taken out of the washers and driers. What a happy closed system. There was a dollar jammed up, which they couldn't get out, and the mom said, "leave it for the spirits of the change machine." A cool thing for her to say. The boy was bumming about it, a little, but a torn dollar bill is no good, in any case.

Phone photos