Asakiyume mita

A project I haven't touched in a while was to read through some folktales from Amazonia. The other day I got back to it. I'm lucky to have the book in two languages: Spanish (the language it was written in) and English:



The English translation is obviously easier for me to read, but it misses certain details, and the English book fails to give certain information--for instance, the names of the people from whom the tales were collected:



Also, the English sometimes elides over details ("cómo conseguía las palometas, doncellas y sábalos tan deliciosos" gets reduced to "how she always managed to get such delicious fish"). Both books have indexes at the back with the Latin names of the plants and animals mentioned (more extensive in the Spanish version), so you can look up what they look like. You want to know what a palometa looks like? Well, search on "Mylossoma duriventris" (turns out to be Mylossoma duriventre, but close enough) and you will see it!

(here it is--pretty!)


The Spanish version also contains illustrations by Rember Yahuarcani López, an artist of Huitoto ethnicity. Here is one of his anacondas:



In this story, a lonely girl wanders out into a pond up to her waist each day to collect the fruit of the aguaje...

It may have looked like this... I can picture the scene thanks to knowing that "aguaje" is Mauritia flexuosa, often called in English a Moriche palm:



Imagine you're wandering out in the water... the fruit you're collecting, which float on the water, look like this:



They hang in luxuriant bundles from the palm:



... so you're gathering your aguaje fruits, and a handsome young man comes up to you--he's fallen in love with you! And you fall in love with him too... but he is an anaconda.

Your parents and younger siblings are willing to turn a blind eye to your remarkable luck bringing home piles of fish (supplied for you by your anaconda boyfriend), but your older brother is suspicious, discovers the truth.... and shoots your boyfriend!

But *you*, meanwhile, are pregnant! And in the fullness of time you give birth to some healthy anaconda babies! (Anacondas give birth to live young, as it happens.)

(they take after dad)


Thanks to your asshole brother, you are a single mom, but your parents support you and build you wooden cradles for your babies and help you look after them until they're old enough to live in the pond. When the babies cry for you from the pond, you go feed them, or, as the Spanish puts it, you offer them your breast.

Your children are very loving and keep supplying your family with huge piles of fresh fish. Happily ever after? But how about some justice for their poor slain father?

... Hmmm, well, to get my mind off revenge, let me share a link to more of Rember Yahuarcani López's art: here you go

And what the heck: a hot link, via Twitter

Wakanomori and I went for a walk in a place where water was bubbling up everywhere. I didn't have a camera, so he obliged me by taking this. You can hardly see that it's water, but it is--you can tell by the ripples (click through to see the photo bigger):



I loved the little pools of smooth stones, set in frames of leaves, all underwater.

The sound was beautiful too--he took recordings.

In other non-pandemic news, I finished reading Children of Ruin! Loved the ending; I'll try to share more on Wednesday. And I've been reading fun short things online, plus doing an excellent beta read.

Plus the marvelous CSE Cooney is doing an audio version of The Gown of Harmonies! She's created a home studio to do it in, just marvelous. So if we can get that out in the world, maybe we can reach a new audience and raise more money for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. I'm thrilled and honored that she's doing this--it's a real donation of effort.

Love to one and all.

What I love about the Ashley Reservoir in Holyoke is that it has paths that run slender and reedlike right across the water--you can run or walk or bike along them and have water on both sides of you and the sky above you, and you will feel indescribable. Under the water are columns and drifts of water plants that the fish swim around and past, not even bothered (apparently) by how mazelike the plant-columns are, and on the water's surface are lily pads and often geese or ducks, and beside or sometimes in the water are turtles, and rising out of the water are reeds, and in the air are swallows and red-winged blackbirds

I wish I could have taken pictures earlier, when the geese had goslings and the irises were blooming. But it's very beautiful now, too.

paths through the water



on a path





( more photos from the reservoir )

There's always something to see, if I go for a walk. These were snow waves I saw around 6 pm, after I finished with work.

We know this is a water world, three-fourths covered in water, and we know the waters can drink up more land--rains can cause rivers to lap up flood plains, climate change can make oceans gulp down shores. And in winter, in the north, dry land becomes flooded, and the floodwaters stand. Right now my world is covered in nearly three feet of water--in the form of snow. And Boston is flooded by some six feet and more.

Here are some more photos of the waves....

It rained so hard the street was streaming, and as always, when the street gets like that, I want to send a boat down it. So today I turned to the internet, refreshed my memory on how to make a paper boat (I think last tried when I was a kid and reading Curious George), and sailed it down the street.

Here is the street



And here is the boat, prior to launch



And here is her 20-second maiden voyage!

Watch on YouTube

Alas, she took on water. . .

I had an hour to spend in the next-door town yesterday while our car was getting an alignment. I got myself a cup of coffee and read a little, then wandered back toward the alignment place, and for my route, I decided on a street called Seelye Street. It should be a kind of magical street, right? Seelye, like seelie? I walked past gracious houses and probable college buildings, and then, beside me on my left, I saw a big patch of darkness.

It was a steep ravine, with trees up top that overhung it so that it was completely in shadow. At the bottom was a very shallow stream, with dry-topped stones sticking out of it.

I decided to go down into that bowl of shadow, and it turned out that actually some thin siftings of sunlight had found their way down, too, because patches of the water were glowing the red-gold color of clear iced tea.

I walked the length of the stream, stepping from stone to stone, until it disappeared into a tunnel under the next street. Chipmunks were chirping sharply at me the whole time--I don't think they get many visitors disturbing them. When I got to the tunnel, I climbed up the ravine and out from the tree cover and onto the street. Out from red-gold darkness and water and into bright sun and tarmac. The one place was so different from the other.

So, Seelye Street was a kind of magical street.