The melon of Saint Caetano is a startling thing. (Caetano is oddly spelled Cajetan in English, presumably with the j pronounced like a y, but I like the Portuguese spelling better!) It is a lovely dark green, and the deeply wrinkled skin accentuates its glossy sheen.
It is experientially in the category of the jiló, a little green eggplant that is remarkably bitter, but remarkably popular as a food despite the taste.
This little melon, mysteriously named for a saint who founded a bank for the poor, is startlingly bitter, but in a fun way. The first bite is shocking, but if you keep eating it the sensation is no longer shocking, until you eat something else, which will taste unaccountably sweet in contrast!
Yesterday we ate one sliced in little rounds and fried in butter, to much acclaim. Today we ate the other in a salad with brother cucumber and some tomatoes keeping the bitter melon company. (It is called Bitter Melon in English, but that is rather literal.)
In any case, natural medicine sources and the medical traditions of some Asian countries consider it good for what ails you. Western medical sites vigorously deny any use whatsoever. So it’s probably good for you.
It made me think about the wonders of the whole melon-cucumber family, though. Has there ever been such an array of delicious, refreshing fruits, so perfectly suited to being eaten on hot days?
Below, some lovely examples, and these are just showing the rinds. Some other time I’ll round up pictures of the insides:
My husband pointed out the other day that I’ve now lived in Rio de Janeiro for longer than I’ve lived in any other town in my life. Thirteen years! Eleven of them in the same apartment. The first two years we didn’t realize we were staying, so we just rented some temporary places notable mostly for various weirdnesses. But not enough time has passed to detail that!
Nevertheless, this came to mind the other morning when I dreamed I was visiting a house in the town I lived in for a good part of my childhood (but only 10 years!) — Yellow Springs, Ohio. I can’t recall a dream in which I was in my college hometown (Bloomington, Indiana) or in Manhattan or Hoboken or, for that matter, Madrid or Chicago or Wanfried-an-der-Lahn, or dozens of other places I’ve visited over the years. Any time I dream vividly of a recognizable place, it’s either Yellow Springs or Sharon, Connecticut.
So here I was, not for the first time, dreaming that I was visiting the old house on Hyde Road where a childhood friend had lived. In dreams set in Yellow Springs the most common locations are Hyde Road or the Glen. I suspect Hyde Road was particularly memorable because it had, in the 1970s, many horses pastured along the roadside, and I would ride my bike down there as often as I could just to see the horses.
My friend’s old house on that road was striking for various reasons. Most other people’s houses were interesting, if only because at the age of 8 or 10 I was now visiting other kids in their homes more often, and for the first time really getting to know the details of how other families lived. One had the coolest squishy linoleum in the hallway, which would hold the imprint of your fingernail if you pressed it. (An activity forbidden as soon as it was discovered by the mother!) Another had a tree house and a strange structure called a carport. It was the only house with a carport I had ever seen; the rest had garages. And this old house on Hyde Road had a bunch of strange features that I remember vividly to this day. One was an enormous brindled dog that I mistook for a tiger on my first visit. Another was a little ‘house’ down from the back door where milk and butter had once been stored in the cold waters of a spring that flowed there. And most fascinating was a secret room, hidden below a large trapdoor in the living room floor, which was in turn hidden by an oriental rug (in my memory, at least). I was told it had been used to shelter people escaping slavery, since the town had been founded by Quakers, who were active in opposing slavery and helping those escaping across the Ohio River to freedom in the North.
So here I was again, as an adult in this dream, going down this same road, and seeing that there was a house-tour event going on. So I wandered up to the house and asked if I could take part in the tour. I no longer recall what happened after that. It was a visually vivid dream, but not otherwise very interesting.
When dreams are set in Sharon, CT the landscape tends to be the main feature – usually I am traversing the neighboring farm fields for some urgent reason or another; or I’m addressing problems in the gully or wooded hillside beside the little cottage we once lived in; these problems usually require traversing the neighboring fields to get the help of the neighbors. I don’t recall anything particularly memorable at the moment. It’s again the visual impact, the clarity of memory of those landscapes, that sticks in my head the most.
Both places had horses in common.
I don’t have any photos of Yellow Springs, but one can find it on google. Of the landscapes around Sharon. My favorite sort: rolling farmland.
The old roads in some cities in Minas Gerais (a state in Brazil) are paved with soapstone (per Wikipedia), which perhaps explains these beautifully colored blocks of stone I saw the other day in the city formerly known as São José del Rei (more recently renamed for a guy named Tiradentes).
I once told a friend that my list of complaints was so long it probably went all the way to hell and back. She replied, in all seriousness, that it probably originated in hell.
I still reflect on this bit of wisdom years later. She had something of a good point to consider.
Sadly, our friendship faded away. She was someone I admired and appreciated, but perhaps some collision between the zig zags of her own life and my tendency to be a bit obnoxiously brash led to a slow distancing and eventual vaporisation… it will be nice to see her again one day. Even if she might join the list of other lost friends whom I hope to re-encounter in heaven, where our mutual adoration of God will manifest in utter joy in seeing each other there.
The complaints which she wisely commented on are usually of things that are common and predictable occurrences, in any case. The complaint serves what purpose exactly? To ask for sympathy, I’d guess.
“Oh, it’s so hot, and my back hurts and my paycheck is late and whatever shall I do about my noisy neighbors?”
These aren’t requests for helpful suggestions, since ordinary means of resolving them already exist and — complaints usually being repetitive — the same problems have been suffered through many times before. I suspect it’s a desire for unity of spirit and friendship. “Ah, this heat!” “Oh, it’s terrible.” “My, my so hot.” “It is indeed.”
Do we want the same when we offer a litany of praise instead of a litany of complaint? “My God, how beautiful the sky is today!” “Right? It really is amazing!” Probably, though I find the litany of praise a much less common component of ordinary conversation.
What about the litany of praise of sufferings? Hardly exists, I’d think. “Well, it sure is nice to have this quiet time in bed, now that I have the flu.” “Oh, I know what you mean, being sick is such a blessing.”
‘Twas the night before Christmas and a roach lay before my neighbor’s door. He lay there as if dead for a day, before I noticed that one leg still groped for the floor, and his antennae probed the air.
Four days later he lay there still, now dead for sure no longer before the neighbor’s door, for the neighbor had kicked him down the hall.
The janitor refused to remove this refuse, and so the roach decorated the bare tile floor for a few days more.
Until today, when a resident took it upon herself to fiercely attack the unmoving roach with a good dose of insecticide.
“But surely he’s long dead?” I asked as she filled the hall with the perfume of poison. “I saw his leg move!” she replied, and ejected an extra spritz into the hall garbage room for good measure.
A few friends and acquaintances have remarked on childhood religious customs in the home, one of them being maintaining quiet on certain occasions. Sundays, Holy Week, or the day of a significant religious event like First Communion were days for quiet play and sedate activity. No radio, no running, wrestling, shrieking or loud laughter.
My own dad tried to institute some kind of religiosity on Sundays, with quiet in the home being one feature. Staying at home was another feature, much as we wanted to go to friends’ houses to play. Our friends were mostly at morning-long church services, in any case. We substituted a lovely walk in the local nature preserve followed by a scoop of ice cream.
It was interesting to meet people later in life who had experienced a similar effort towards teaching children an appreciation for quiet and recollection. As far as I’ve ever heard it was always with a spiritual intent.
It reminds me of this episode in the life of the prophet Elijah (Elias):
From 1 Kings (3 Kings in the Vulgate):
And Achab told Jezabel all that Elias had done, and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. And Jezabel sent a messenger to Elias, saying: Such and such things may the gods do to me, and add still more, if by this hour tomorrow I make not thy life as the life of one of them. Then Elias was afraid, and rising up he went whithersoever he had a mind: and he came to Bersabee of Juda, and left his servant there, And he went forward, one day’s journey into the desert. And when he was there, and sat under a juniper tree, he requested for his soul that he might die, and said: It is enough for me, Lord, take away my soul: for I am no better than my fathers. And he cast himself down, and slept in the shadow of the juniper tree: and behold an angel of the Lord touched him, and said to him: Arise and eat.
He looked, and behold there was at his head a hearth cake, and a vessel of water: and he ate and drank, and he fell asleep again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said to him: Arise, eat: for thou hast yet a great way to go. And he arose, and ate, and drank, and walked in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights, unto the mount of God, Horeb. And when he was come thither, he abode in a cave: and behold the word of the Lord came unto him, and he said to him: What dost thou here, Elias? And he answered: With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant: they have thrown down thy altars, they have slain thy prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away.
And he said to him: Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord: and behold the Lord passeth, and a great and strong wind before the Lord over throwing the mountains, and breaking the rocks in pieces: the Lord is not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake: the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire: the Lord is not in the fire, and after the fire a whistling of a gentle air. And when Elias heard it, he covered his face with his mantle, and coming forth stood in the entering in of the cave, and behold a voice unto him, saying: What dost thou here, Elias? And he answered: With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant: they have destroyed thy altars, they have slain thy prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away. And the Lord said to him: Go, and return on thy way through the desert to Damascus: and when thou art come thither, thou shalt anoint Hazael to be king over Syria.
And thou shalt anoint Jehu the son of Namsi to be king over Israel: and Eliseus the son of Saphat, of Abelmeula, thou shalt anoint to be prophet in thy room. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall escape the sword of Hazael, shall be slain by Jehu: and whosoever shall escape the sword of Jehu, shall be slain by Eliseus. And I will leave me seven thousand men in Israel, whose knees have not been bowed before Baal, and every mouth that hath not worshipped him kissing the hands.
I love this painting of the Annunciation and Visitation for the joyfulness it carries. Not only in the bold colors but also in the comportment of Our Lady and Saint Isabel (Elizabeth).
What’s really cool about this painting is that it’s the outside of the doors of a retablo that opened above an altar.
Inside you would see the following:
This latter gives a good idea of the scale of the piece. It is in a museum, but I have not found the history of it, for which Church it was originally built and so on. It would have been quite dramatic above an altar, and candlelit.
Someone once pointed out, and it stuck with me, that traditional European sacred art was intended to be viewed in light filtered through stained glass and candlelight. And so when it is displayed in electric light, especially very bright light, you do not have the same experience. Especially in regards to candlelight, which tends to flicker and move, which makes for a certain ‘living, breathing’ quality to the images.
Are there ants in my tea? Might be. Are there ants in the water? What a bother. Are there ants in the sugar? Small and big, for sure! Watch out! A parade of ants carries fresh fallen blossoms. Ants with fierce bites hide in the grass. Ants with gold bottoms explore the forest floor. Agitated ants run mysterious zig-zags on the bathroom floor at night. We guess the earth here is at least 60% pure ants. But despite dad’s warning rhymes, I’ve been careful to avoid any chance to have ants in my pants.
Sometime in the last year a pair of thrushes built a nest in a large fern on the varanda and raised four chicks. We enjoyed the initial lovely singing and nest building. The raising of the chicks involved more messiness and aggravated parents, who only scold and don’t sing while raising the nestlings. When the chicks had grown and flown, we tidied up the battered, half-dead fern and it regrew.
This month the same birds are back, having spent the last two weeks building a nest and singing pretty songs around it.
At our house in Connecticut a pair of birds, of a species I forget, built a nest in the same spot every year. Perhaps they weren’t always the same exact birds. The nest was on top of the bathroom exhaust fan, but despite the regular noisy use of the fan they built there anyway. It was very safe from predators.
One year a fledgling didn’t leave the nest with his brothers and sisters, but was flapping there, struggling. I climbed a ladder to see why, and his foot was entangled in some nesting material. I untangled him, but his foot was damaged from having the circulation cut off for a long time. I imagine he learned to take off and land with one foot. He flew fine.
Here are our local thrushes, pictures taken last time they nested. They are similar to the American Robin both in song and behavior. A touch more aggressive, maybe a bit larger, more muted coloration. They’ll eat anything when nesting – fruit, seeds, insects… I hide the feeding station around the corner so other birds can eat, too, out of their site.
An adult on the nest.The last fledgling getting ready to leave.
Joys and sorrows in praise of God 