About fan mail . . . and Yemanja

Katy, a friend of a friend, wrote a fan letter about my book, The Mermaid Quilt & Other Tales. More personal than a review, this letter between friends, recounted that she had opened the book at random and read about Yemanja in a poem set in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. She was immediately pulled into the world of the poem because she had once visited there and had fallen in love with the people of that town and their culture, just as I had.  Here's the poem:

"Imagine a Town . . . "

The women of Salvador dance down to the ocean,
bearing gifts to honor  Yemanja

Imagine a town each February 2
that closes its shops.
All the people come down to the water
wearing transparent beaded necklaces and
bringing gifts, little boats
filled with flowers and perfumes
to launch into the sea.

They come, singing songs and dancing,
the people of the town down to the water,
near the Rio Vermelho,
the beautiful brown women
wearing gowns the color of the sea.
Bearing gifts they come singing to you,
Yemanja, orixa, Princess,
oh, Janaina, Queen of the Sea,
mother of the waters, of the storms,
of the fish.  In your honor,
the sweet perfumes, the rejoicing.

Yemanja appears, giving gifts to her followers

Even the cat prowling
under the tables of Mama Bahia
for scraps of fish
has eyes the color of the milky green sea.

How I long to dance with the people
along the beaches here in your town,
Yemanja,
in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil,
a town once of fishermen
who went to the sea in small boats,
while women waited
and prayed by the shore.
Now all shadows and phantoms
they come from the past,
their boats filled
with flowers and perfumes.

Another image of Yemanja

In Salvador, Saturdays are consecrated to Yemanja, the queen of the waters, ruler of the upper sea, a goddess (orixa) in the condomble religion.

Most commonly shown as a mermaid, Yemanja appears in many forms in this city where people still gather on the beaches each February 2 to offer her gifts. I was fortunate enough to stay in Salvador in 2009 for about a week. The first two photographs are from a monumental painting by an anonymous folk artist. This painting hangs in the lobby of the Pousada do Boqueirao, a hotel in Salvador where we stayed for one wonderful week overlooking the ocean. (Oh, please go look at the images of this wonderful hotel.)

This last painting is smaller, perhaps as large as your hand, also from the Pousada, which was filled with images of Yemanja.

But Katy's letter connects my poem to her experiences in Salvador, her appreciation for how Africans, brought to Brazil against their will as slaves, yet retained their own religion and their cultural identity.

As a writer new to building audience, how do I respond to her letter? For respond I must, first out of gratitude. She read my stuff and found it moving. What more could any writer want? I shall write her a letter back, perhaps including these color images, for they do not appear in my book.

How have you responded to your readers? What would you do in response to Katy's letter?

Photoplay

Roz Morris posted this writing prompt, really a blog hop and a challenge: To write about strangers who appear in a photo you've taken. 

So I selected this picture at random, a side street in Rio, taken in January 2009. The picture is quintessentially Allen. I play with my camera and wait beside the small neighborhood floral shop as he consults Lonely Planet, his mapping skill gained from years of traveling, but one he now fears he can no longer do as well. 

Behind him a couple strides determinedly. An older couple. Are they married? Are they Bazillian? Perhaps they are tourists, as we are, here for such a short time. Perhaps they are émigrés from Europe, for despite its pulsing samba beat and impossibly white sandy beaches(Ipanema, Cococabana, how these names linger), Rio has a decidedly European flavor. Brazilians drink espresso in small coffee shops with fresh, delicate sweet breads and stroll at all times along wide boulevards.

A couple strides past

my husband, lost in a guide book,

as anonymous as flowers in pots

lined up by the door of a small florist.

None of us notice the

raw pink vine flowers that blossom above.

The couple marches, arguing,

he has a lover,

she wants a divorce;

he cannot find his way.

148 Regrets . . .

For how many years have I known
your heart is larger than life;
its beats numbered like mine,
but with fewer days. So we embrace
the future without looking back,
here in this land of baroque hotels,
bus drivers who slide by trucks
and pedestrians by inches.
We stroll past palm trees and jacaranda,
orchids at eye level. Tonight I sleep
where Pablo Neruda once slept. I look with his eyes
on this colonial town with amazement:
How is it possible I have lived to see this day,
another day with you? We have memories,
enough for a lifetime or two, maybe three.
Should the day come when I sleep alone,
I will remember here, this moment, and you.


This week's Sunday Scribblings was hard to write. We're on the road today from Belo Horizonte, in Brazil, to Ouro Preto, finally a smaller colonial town of about 40,000. Pablo Neruda did stay once at the Pouso do Chico Rei, a hotel with its own interesting history, and, I think, internet in the lobby.

#144 For richer . . .

As I walk along Sao Paulo streets,
the people stroll, no rush
here, arm-in-arm they wander as slowly
as if they were in a museum,
talking softly as they go
from one block to the next.

Later, I stroll as they,
past orchids growing wild in trees,
bouganville, impatience pink and white,
and margharitas,
yellow hibiscus, nameless others;
the smallest yards tell me stories
of fallen palm trees,
clipped shrubs and forget-me-nots.

I climb the yellow brick stairs to the Pinacoteca,
walk past portraits of another era, painters
as unknown as flowers, who saw with brushes
grasslands, mountains and the people there,
fishing, reading, sitting in transplanted
Victorian living rooms, still sighing sadness.
still singing with joy.


This week’s Sunday Scribblings asks what we are richer for . . . for me it is the gift of experience and interpretation that we create through writing or other arts. For me, travel gives me the ability to explore other cultures through meeting and talking with people, visiting museums (like the Pinacoteca do Estado), walking through parks, and, not least, eating delicious food with Allen. Yesterday we discovered the painter Jose Ferraz de Almeida Junior (1850-1899). He lived to be only 49, yet his paintings of Brazilian rural life continue. And I am richer for every painting I see, every book I read, each friend I share my life with.