Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 158

a comment from someone far away

So, I am revving up my efforts to learn Tetun, and what should arrive in my email inbox but a comment on this entry on Kirsty Sword Gusmão--in (mainly) Tetun! Nothing motivates my language studies like a chance to actually communicate. Bring on the dictionaries, the web searches, the websites of prayers-in-every-language! It helps that the last phrase is in Indonesian--then by Rosetta Stone efforts I can figure out previous phrase, and the presence of Portuguese loan words in Tetun helps figu...

building muscles to equal my ambitions

--that's what it's always about, isn't it. There are desires and goals, and then there's getting strong enough (metaphorically and literally) to do those things. ... I may have to keep my head down a bit if I'm really going to master some rudimentary Tetum so as not to be *completely at sea* in East Timor. I also have some tedious-aggravating stuff to deal with in real life (nothing serious-bad, just time consuming and mildly yucky), so that may also keep me away a bit.

But not too terribly mu...

Stop the Presses: East Timor!

I've been approved to do guest volunteering in the mountains of East Timor in August!

It's not for very long--I can't afford to be not earning for very long--and it's going to cost a hell of a lot. But this is something I feel my life is for, and so I'm very, very happy that I've been approved.

"Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?"

From Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road:

I used to take a seat on top of the gate post and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?"

They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-...

Pen Pal--character portraits!

I commissioned the talented young artist Kelsey Michele Soderstrom to do pro portraits of the principle characters of Pen Pal, with the idea that one day they can go on a website I will one day set up. And they are finished!

Here is twelve-year-old Em. . .



And here is twenty-four-year-old Kaya . . .



(I do have them in larger format for the eventual website; I'm keeping to a small size here, though)

Blue for the floating community of Mermaid's Hands; red for the Ruby Lake. I am so pleased!

Meanw...

Eastern gray tree frogs and eastern gray squirrels

Last night Waka and I walked by a catchment pool that was deafening with the chirps of Eastern gray tree frogs. As we got right by it, I swore I could hear one right by my foot and one in the bush beside us. And eventually I saw them--one, clinging to a twig in the bush, the other, chilling right there in the grass. They filled up their throats like balloons to make their shrill chirps. Wonderful.

Then this morning, I saw a squirrel lying practically squashed flat in front of the rear wheel of...

June First is a place

I traveled there by bicycle, accompanied partway by wakanomori . He heard and saw a bobolink. "R2-D2," he said. Yes!

The power lines were crackling in a clear blue sky, trying to contact the lightnings, maybe, and in a field a toppled Gulf sign lay.



"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands grasses stretch far away.

Or

I am the grass; I cover all

Unlike th...

(and begging your indulgence, bobolinks)

This is a terrible video, taken with my camera. You can't hear anything to speak of, and what you can hear of birdsong is more red-winged blackbirds than bobolinks. But at .29 and just before the end at .48, you can, if you bend your ear to your device's speakers, hear the song, and you can see them the way they appeared to me, black-and-white creatures with dabs of yellow on their heads, in the golden light of morning.

Things that crossed the road in front of me, this morning

I set out at 5:15 am.

The first thing to cross my path, to lope across the road, was a coyote. It was the size of a fawn but sturdier in the chest, and though it long legs like a fawn, its gait was smoother and more liquid, and it had a long coyote tail, and erect, triangular coyote ears.

Every time I see coyotes I am surprised how much bigger they are than foxes. Much, much more like wolves.

The second thing to cross the road, streaming silently, was mist





(Meanwhile, the sun was quietly rising)



T...

the land of tea and chocolate milk

Did you know our streams run with orange pekoe tea, here?

They do:



And our puddles are chocolate milk. (This one used only 1 percent milk, hence the weakness of it. The frog likes it, though.)



Last night I made Aung San Suu Kyi's fish-and-tomato curry for supper. ASSK is a bit more of a figure of controversy now that she's not locked away in her house. She hasn't been doing as much for the Rohingya Muslims and the people of Kachin as many--especially those people themselves--would like (though s...