The beasts of my travels

Real beasts of Swaziland
Back in the nineties and for almost two years, the Mkhaya Nature Preserve, near Mbabane, capital of the Kingdom of Swaziland was my favorite weekend destination. I kept the postcard as a reminder of the Park's great beauty. It is a small preserve founded and run by the Reilly family and by Swazis and it has helped to save white and black rhinos from extinction.  The young boy, I believe, is Ted Reilly. The caption reads  "Forgot the gun".  In reality white rhinos are quite peaceful, not to say the same for black rhinos.

Imaginary beasts at the Passarada farm

Wild cat or ant eater? Passarada farm, Piracaia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, January 1st, 2010

Eve and the Beasts in Paradise
Mark Twain in Eve's Diaries, illustrations by Lester Ralph, free and printable book, part of the Project Gutenberg.

Eve muses: "I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; but I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on strawberries. I had never seen a tiger before, but I knew them in a minute by the stripes. If I could have one of those skins, it would make a lovely gown."

Travels through the frontiers

She Meets the Bag Lady
(sans frontieres par excellence)
The bag lady again, inhabitant of no city, dweller of dream

The one dressed in the best of wool,
the shiniest of thrifty shop of Gucci shoes,
you could not tell but for a slight frayed edge,
moth bitten hole this side of sleeve,
in her thrilling dazzling mocca green castor scarf and skirt,
between you and I and her and Liz,

she the best in dress,
albeit the shine of shoe be made of spit,
this lady of color and of coordination,
with many wrinkles to her smile and to her face,
many wrinkles to her thighs and to her belly,
this hallucinatory woman of many wrinkles

sets her mind to go to Paris,
sets her will to go on and find Alice,
that same Alice,
who with much malice interfered in her love,
way back way when.

So this my lady of fifty, of sixty, of seventy,

lined incised
slight trembling fingers
sets a light to this one last rag,
soaked in virgin olive, pure will not do,
sets a light in the tin garbage can
on fire and warms her hands.

this bag lady of eighty,

and on she goes to catch a bus,
on her way to find a way to go to Paris,
to see the tower, to sip the wine, to touch the statue,
to fall in love and to find the malice.

Last I saw her, the bag lady,
she was singing songs inside a barge,
inside a bus,
impeccable as always,

this bag lady

that likes to be fed on grapes.

________________________
beneath the lines
written here in Belo Horizonte, during a visit, a few years ago.  The bag lady was an elderly American woman, a creature of dream, travelling the world with a smile and a bunch of sturdy shopping bags. I met her at the bus station and we chatted briefly.
My poem appears in Dead Sleeping Shamans, by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli, May 2010.

The Poetry of Botany

Travelling without a gun and a box of watercolors

If you travelling to Brasil, stop by Belo Horizonte and visit the Margaret Mee (1909/1988) botanical illustration exhibit at the Palacio das Artes – a celebration of 100 years of her life and work.

Born in England, she came to Brasil in her fifties and in her sixties and seventies she was travelling alone to the Amazon to find, document and paint Brazilian flowers. In a marriage of poetry to science, she made important contributions to the understanding of Brazilian tropical botany and to the need for conservation of what we may only see in watercolor wash.

The exhibit spans three elegant halls on the first floor of the Palacio das Artes, a modern building nested inside the Municipal Gardens (Parque Municipal) planned by Burle Marx - bromeliads and orchids in bloom inside and out.

One of her book is for sale at the Palácio’s bookstore and already on my shelf. Tomorrow I go to enjoy my third visit.

About the flowers, she said once:

“They’re extraordinarily aggressive, some of them. The bromeliads, that’s the pineapple family, have great thorns. In fact, they’re extremely difficult to collect, as you can imagine. They have hosts of creatures living in them, including scorpions, poisonous spiders, ants, well, almost… and even snakes in some cases. But of course, there are the others which are so beautiful, delicate color, orchids, for instance, the Cattleya violacea, and the blue orchid, Acacallis cyanea, which is absolutely a dream.”

Dialogues seem tired

There is very little dialogue left in the world. Dialogues seem tired.
So I return to my monologues, in my search for this house in the interior.

Beyond Ganga Devi, Indian folk artist of the Mithila tradition and her incredible story (I am still searching for pictures of her latest work, when she abandons the formalities of the tantric geometric traditions of godly symbolisms and paints stark scenes in the hospital where she dies in 1991, of cancer, at 63.)

Beyond Ganga Devi, I cannot stop reading this guy’s blog, Will, he says, is thirty two, a Gemini and he knows books. He quotes with a firm hand and if one reads it carefully, one begins to imagine we all live in the world of fantasy.

Today in his blog I found mention to a children’s book co-authored by Brecht – “Die drei soldatten”, published in 1931.
Provoking children to ask questions: Why me and who ate the rainbows?

See the end of this post to get to the rainbow bit.

In a mixture of quotes from various sources and original text, he tells us about Brecht’s poem “Die Drei Soldatten” – Hunger, Mishap, and Consumption. Very much worth a visit because it reminds me of today, in our world.

In the end of the poem, 
"With the death of God, the invisible becomes visible again. The class war is revealed.”

Back to dialogue I say, if you decide to go to Will’s site, do scroll down to the end of that post to find out about Who Ate the Rainbow? in yet nother book:

"When Uh-oh the rainbow is cut in half by a kite string, it is eaten by a big fish, which is in turn eaten by a duck, which lays a rainbow egg. The snake eats the egg and acquires rainbow colors. When it touches a withered tree, the tree is immediately restored to life and even bears rainbow fruit.


Uh-oh...”

PLAYING WITH THE BUTTERFLIES OF PASSARADA

The Myth

From Collages

The Papago, native North Americans tell us in a legend that once upon a time, the Creator felt sorry for the children, when he realized that their destiny was to grow old, fat, blind and to die. So he collected the fountains for the most beautiful colors of the universe, the flowers, the leaves, the sun, the skies and mixed and bundled them up in a package as a gift for the children. When they opened up the bundle, the butterflies, colorful and enchanting flew out in song, much to the delight of the children. And fright by the song birds, who jealous, protested and petionned the Creator.

And there we have it, we got what we got.

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/HowTheButterfliesCameToBe-Papago.html

The Naming Game

Butterflies are classified as insects in the order of the Lepidopters –from the Latin lepidor - scales and ptera – wings. Fossil finds, although rare, suggest they emerged in tandem with the flowers (Angiosperms), during the Cretacious period, about 135 million years ago… million years ago.

Taxonomy, or the naming game can be fun, if you take it with a grain of salt.  Edward Abbey comes to mind in Desert Solitaire when he cries:

” why name them? Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity: the itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things.”

http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln35/Abbey.html

But what a joy when, only yesterday, I found out that my two sided fruit eater was named Hamadryas amphinome or Red crack (estaladeira vermelha) and that she belonged to a family.
Here is a list of all named butterflies seen during my stay at the Passarada farm. In order, common names, scientific name, taxonomic family and notes.

The nameless ones will follow soon.

Borboletando na Mata: As Borboletas da Passarada

Os Papagos, índios norte americanos, explicam que a tempos atrás, o Creador teve pena das crianças, quando se deu conta de que o destino delas era mesmo o de envelhecer, engordar, ficarem mancas, cegas e morrer. Daí que êle pegou as fontes de tôdas as côres mais belas, das flôres, do sol, das folhas, do céu . Misturou tôdas dentro de um pacote e as deu de presente as crianças. Quando elas abriram o pacote, dali voaram as borboletas, coloridas e encantadoras. Note-se bem que naquele tempo as borboletas também cantavam, para delícia das crianças e grande espanto dos passarinhos. Êstes finalmente se reuniram em comício e reclamaram junto ao Creador. E deu no que deu…

Clique no link para um versao da estoria em ingles:
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/HowTheButterfliesCameToBe-Papago.html

Como as bruxas, as borboletas são classificadas pelos biólogos como insetos dentro da ordem dos Lepidopteros, os unicos insetos que tem asas com escamas. Do latim Lepido= escamados e ptera= asas. Achados fósseis, embora raros, sugerem que elas tenham aparecido na terra ao mesmo tempo em que apareceram as flôres, durante o período do Cretácio - por volta de 135.000.000 anos atrás, sim, milhões de anos atrás.

Borboletas da Passarada

Já foram descritas mais de 180.000 espécies de borboletas e mariposas no mundo e destas , 15,000 são borboletas. O Brasil tem umas 5.000 espécies conhecidas até agora e ouvi dizer que só na região da Mata Atlântica brasileira podem ser encontradas 1,200 espécies.

Documento aqui uma dúzia de espécies de borboletas que ou fotografei, ou reconheci durante a minha estadia na fazenda da Passarada, perto de Piracaia, no estado de São Paulo, um periodo intermitente e curto de 2007 a 2010.

BORBOLETA-MONARCA

(Monarca) Danaus plerippus (Linnaeus) Família: Danaidae.Nome em inglês: Monarch butterfly.

Originárias das Américas, as borboletas monarcas atualmente se encontram espalhadas pelo mundo inteiro. Os adultos podem passar longos periodos em jejum e pesando menos de uma grama, podem voar enormes distâncias.

As borboletas precisam e se alimentam quase exclusivamente de liquidos, do nectar de flores de côres variadas, e dos minerais encontrados em poças de lama.

Visite o link para mais fotos da metamorfose:
http://www.monarch-butterfly.com/

As lagartas das monarcas se alimentam exclusivamente das plantas Asclepias (da mitologia grego-romana, o deus Esculápio era o deus da Medicina e da cura.) e tem sido residentes constantes da Passarada, onde a Asclepias curasavica ou algodãozinho do campo é protegido.

Na América do Norte a sobrevivência dessas borboletas está ameaçada por perda do “habitat” para suas lagartas.


Foi grande a minha alegria quando vi a larva da monarva nessa planta brasileira na minha primeira visita a Passarada em dezembro de 2007. A foto acima foi tirada agora em 2010. Observei que a borboleta adulta continua preferindo o algodaozinho do campo.

Valentine

I made you into meanings

you did not have

and in the making of these meanings


               I got to know you so well!


Where then did I get this exquisite 9th sense of you?
Where did I get my clues?

The clinging evidence is never clear.

When did you slip in
                un-announced
in the messages from beneath the dreams
between the lines
inside the hollows of very old trees?