Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 25

On Indigenous Peoples Day I ...

I didn't set out to do anything other than catch up with housework today, but then on a morning run I stopped to pick up a walnut fruit, and then that got me thinking about the staining capabilities of walnut, and then that reminded me of the Magüta/Tikuna people, who use the huito fruit (Genipa americana) to dye skin black. For babies there's ceremony where they're washed with its juice for protection. The juice doesn't start out black, but it turns black in the air:

(Screenshots from a lovely 1...

Fernando

My dad had to have some surgery last week, so I've been staying with him. (He's recovering just fine--drove to the supermarket today--but he's 91, so I want to be sure he feels completely stable before I leave.)

When he was still in the hospital, we took walks around the unit, and we passed a bulletin board that had comments that people had left, thanking and praising the nurses, nurse assistants, and techs. These two for Fernando caught my eye:

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[text: "Fernando is an asset to your work unit. He b...

B'town fair, 2022

After cancelling in 2020 and 2021, the Belchertown Fair was back this year. Little Springtime took ~ her new wife ~ to see this piece of Americana. They signed the "How far have you come" board in the exhibit hall, and I sincerely doubt there will be anyone who has come to the fair from further away:



The exhibit hall had some lovely homemade things, including this magnificent quilt:



There are some details ( under this cut )

The design isn't 100 percent original: there are patterns out there that ar...

Wednesday reading, fish 'n' birds, and messages on trucks

In Aventura en el Amazonas both Mayam and Nashi are learning about the chain of life--Mayam when her mother talks to her about piranhas and other carnivorous fish, and Nashi when he sees a cayman gobble up a roseate spoonbill.

"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."

And

"Nature knows how to do its...

window to sky

This was a beautiful moment, yesterday




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mooshed together

When we were in Letícia, I bought a bar of soap (and a beautiful green plastic bucket ) to wash out socks and underwear and things. The soap was just a bar of Dove soap, but it's not soap I buy at home, so the scent was new to me, and so it became the scent of vacation, a scent of Letícia. We brought it home with us (along with the bucket), and every time I use it, the scent takes me back there.

Now, though, it's mooshed together with some fragments of old soap. Familiar everyday soap fragrance a...

As the Tide Came Flowing In, by Sonya Taaffe

The problem I have with poems and stories that I like is that I keep wanting to read people good lines or passages for them, and it’s very easy to end up reading them the whole thing. It’s like giving a person a present, except you’re so excited about the present that you start unwrapping it for them, excitedly pointing out all its special features. I will try not to do that with Sonya’s most recent collection (poetry plus a novelette) BUT IT WILL BE HARD.

With Sonya, you’re never far away from...

narrow gangplanks/walkways, boats

I realized it's September, which means this little access stream, which is where we boarded all boats to get to the Amazon, will have dried up, or is about to. You can walk to those stilt houses across the way. (And those stilts tell you how high the water will get. Right now, though, the people in those houses are cultivating crops** that will mature in the months between now and the river rising, using the 40 centimeters of alluvial deposits the Amazon leaves behind as it recedes.)

Note: I'm l...

Exchange (airport poem, 8-30-2022

I had to pick up Wakanomori from the airport today, and these thoughts went through my head, looking at the currency exchange booth)

Exchange

Give me paper money in different colors & sizes w/metallic strips/clear windows & the faces of unfamiliar important people/flowers/mountains.
Look, I brought shells/rare seeds/these diamonds washed clean in the blood of innocents
surely
we can trade

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Two important book things and one story thing

Thing one: in case there are any people who follow me who don't follow the magnificent sovay (Sonya Taaffe), she has a new collection of poems, plus one novelette: As the Tide Came Flowing In, from Nekiya Press. Here is a link.

Sonya's poems are as if you picked up a piece of sea glass and were turning it over in your hands, feeling its smoothness, and then you held it up to the light, and suddenly you found yourself somewhere entirely different. And her stories are peopled with intense, intellig...