Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 169

Diving back in time

I just found out Aung San Suu Kyi and I were at Kyoto University at the same time in the 1980s--or anyway, we overlapped.

Now I'm begging my mind to turn up a memory of having seen her on the campus (that I avoided whenever I could, feeling so deficient--OH I WAS A SAD EXCUSE FOR AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT)

Instead I'm remembering waiting to catch the bus downtown, where I had some remedial Japanese classes, and talking with a guy from Guam. It turned out we both liked the same song by the group...

good fortune, the storm thief, and a feeling of dampness

A story of a patrimony of sorrow, told to Luís Cardoso by Mali Mau... Random bolding is mine.

“When my mother was pregnant with me, she used to say that she wanted a good future for her child. She tried to find out from wealthy people how they came by their fortune, but when they spoke only of inheritances, natural talents and suchlike, she gave up. Then one day, an old woman came to her and told her that, if fate smiled upon her, she might accidentally meet the spirit of seduction, Pontiana....

At the Registry of Motor Vehicles

Yesterday I had to produce my driver's license for ID and discovered it had expired several months ago--so today I went over the hills and far away to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, where I sat on a bench and finished Luís Cardoso's The Crossing (lovely, moving, informative--more later, or elsewhere) as I waited.

An old couple were sitting in the bank of benches in front of mine, and the wife was coughing dreadfully--exhausted, harsh coughing. Then a man came out from behind the hidden counte...

snow mermaid

All our snow melted yesterday, and then this morning four or five new inches fell. "I'm going out to shovel the driveway," I said, but then, when I realized the snow was wet and pack-y, I made a snow mermaid instead.







If I had lots of time I'd model the scales on her fishy parts and shape her body and her wet hair and (...and what would really happen is, her arm would fall off, and probably the tip of her tail, too).

... I'd better do some paid work now.

blue

It's being whispered that guerrilla blue flowed in, under cover of mist, rolled right by the street lamps, as brazen as only blue can be.

People are nervous. We hear them murmur anxiously, and we knit our brows too, to make a show of worry. But when our eyes meet--yours, mine--we smile. Our secret delight, our secret triumph.

communication

In conversation in a different entry, mnfaure said, "It is natural, I think, to believe that if people will only *listen* they will get what we are saying [but]I don't know that listening alone will lead to understanding."

And I thought about how we do end up understanding--it's through conversation back and forth, question and answer, call and response:

paths in the mist

"STAY ON TRAIL," the sign commands.
Or does it warn?
Or does it plead?



"Otherwise," it might add, "You will find yourself Elsewhere." Else, Elsewhere



A cold-iron road runs through this land...



but there are tunnels under it:



Here are pails of detritus from angelic rail repair:



And here are the footprints of a traveler who walks alongside, not on, the iron road:

from The Crossing

The turtle in search of immortality

On the beach my anxious mother lit the kerosene lamp and walked the whole length of the sands, lighting up the sea in search of the beiro that would take us to the island of Ataúro, visible hunched in the pitch-dark night like a giant turtle which, in search of immortality, had turned itself into land.

By days rather than hours

Our family solitude was soon broken by the arrival of an African cipaio, the descendant of former deportees from Mozambique, the famou...

unexpectedness

Heaven and other people's overscheduling means one job has disappeared, leaving me free to complete another job, but is that what I want to do? No! I want to keep on reading The Crossing, a memoir of life in East Timor, and this book of Aung San Suu Kyi's speeches that I've got.

Speaking of which, there's a very interesting interview she gave to New Delhi TV transcribed here, which I found fascinating. She is unwavering in her deflection of attempts at hagiography, a political pragmatist, and...

Hot and sour soup with foraged fungi

So, urbpan told me that the fungus I posted about a few entries back, the one he showed me (Exidia recisa), is good in hot and sour soup. I love hot and sour soup! So I went back out and gathered more of it...



...and then plumped it up in water, and then grabbed a hot-and-sour soup recipe off the Internet, only to discover that although I had the things to make the soup flavor (garlic, hot chiles, chicken stock, soy sauce, vinegar), I didn't have any of the other soup innards--bamboo shoots, l...